Wanda

Ian doesn't want me to meet with the new human on my own, even though Jeb strongly suggested that I do just that. Ian worries, always. Ever since the night he fell asleep holding me in his arms and dreamt of everything working out the way he hoped it would, ever since I broke his heart and stole away into the night without saying goodbye, he worries.

Ian fears that I will get hurt, either because this new body is uncoordinated or on the biting hiss of a snide remark from Magnolia. He frets that I will disappear again, that I will go somewhere he cannot hold me in his palms, leaving him with only shards of me that are too sharp for him to really grab on to. He agonizes that someday he won't get to say goodbye, and all he'll be left with are hints of me in Eamon's eyes or Mel's memories.

Ian worries because he is kind.

So I do not begrudge him these feelings – this fear. Unlike me, Kyle and Mel tease Ian every time they see him grimace if he's forced to be apart from me, calling him clingy or asking, what is wrong with you, bro? Only Jared truly empathizes with Ian's fears, because Jared knows what's possible if you let your guard down, if you assume that the people you love will always come home safe. He lives with the painful intimacy of truly understanding that you never know how much time you actually have left. So, Jared will clasp Ian on the shoulder, and shoot him a tight smile full of sympathy and empty words. But it helps; it helps to drive back the pain and blind panic and it allows Ian to get through the day.

While Ian is concerned for me today, having to speak with Henry about his dislike of the Souls, to me it isn't terribly different from every other day. Even though Jeb goes out of his way to tell me at least twice a week that I belong here in the caves, and Mel has assured me she will scratch the eyes out of anyone who makes me feel otherwise (a sentiment I tend to regard with much dismay), I am still a colonizer living amongst the conquered. Not every day is a struggle anymore, but neither are they all easy ones. But that is part of the experience of being human, I believe.

I do compromise with him though, and agree to work in the west field, which is full of other people in case Henry gets too agitated. Years have passed, but the scars of Kyle cornering me when I was alone and vulnerable in the shadows of the dark empty bathing room have never completely faded from Ian's memory.

Just in case, Wanda, he whispered against my collarbone as we lay in bed this morning. Just for me.

I am halfway through harvesting a row of peppers when I hear a throat clear nearby. I have to shield my eyes from the bright sunlight to see Henry clearly, but it also means I catch the flinch he attempts to hide when my eyes reflect the sun like the mirrors above us, shining bright flashes against the cave walls.

It only hurts a little to see him do it.

"Henry," I greet him with a smile. He doesn't return it, but nods in acknowledgement. "Please sit," I invite, because I don't think he ever will otherwise.

He does eventually, but maintains his distance, settling a few safe feet away from me.

"How are you today, Henry?" I inquire, returning to my gardening. I'm itchy from the dirt that mixes with my sweat and I'm quickly realizing that I'm more anxious over meeting with this boy than I originally thought I would be. I'm slightly nauseated and there's a strange aching clench in my chest, reminiscent of what I felt when I first realized that Ian had feelings for me, or when I knew that Eamon was finally finally coming. It feels unpleasant, unsettling, and a little bit scary.

But I employ my tried and true method of dealing with such things – keeping my hands busy with work as a means of distraction.

"I'm...fine," Henry replies slowly, still not smiling. But he's looking at me with narrowed eyes – observing me, perhaps.

"I am glad to hear it," I say, and can practically hear Melanie scoffing somewhere in my head. Stop dancing around it, Wanderer, she would say. Even now, the not-hearing her is like a bruise – tender and dark. You're being too polite, even for a Soul. So I channel the bits of Mel that are left in me, the tiny cuts that pinch at my heart and will never ever heal, and say, "It seems I am the last person on your list to speak with."

The bright sun makes it so Henry cannot hide the blush that crawls across his cheeks, though it may provide him with an excuse of overheating as a means of disguising his discomfort.

"It's ok," I hasten to assure him. "I understand that not everyone enjoys my company."

He shrugs, muttering, "You seem to have a pretty outspoken fanbase, from what I've seen."

I laugh; my voice is high and giggly. While I have gotten used to it, it's still never what I expect to hear when I open my mouth. I wave my mud-caked hand dismissively. "They're the exceptions, not the rule. This place is for humans, I've never forgotten that."

He doesn't say anything, but shifts back and forth in the dirt, as though physically weighing what I have just said. After a few minutes of silence, when it's just creeping towards becoming awkward, he murmurs, "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"What made you different?" he asks, his words spilling out of him like water from a spring. "Why are you so unlike the rest of the bu...aliens? Like, why do you want to stay here with people and not try to take over this place or turn them in?"

As Henry speaks, my gut lurches at the mere idea of doing what he suggests. I have never doubted my decision to remain in the caves, but it is reassuring all the same that each time I'm presented with an alternative, my body and mind cringe away from it. I have found my home here, and no matter what happens to me it will always be mine.

"Well," I begin, keeping my eyes on my hands as I work. "I don't know if this planet changed me, or if it simply revealed me for who I truly am. I wondered at that as Melanie and I became close, and years later, I wonder at it still." I pause, rubbing some dirt absently between my fingertips. It is a strange sensation, and I wonder how alien it would feel against my hands as a Bear or my tentacles as a See Weed. "Looking back, I have always been alone, no matter how many other Souls I was surrounded by. We Souls do not see ourselves as violent or causing devastation, rather, we come to a planet to experience, to heal the ills we encounter." Henry looks as though he wants to interrupt me, so I hurry to continue. "I came to Earth believing that – believing we were right. So many things – so many people – changed my way of thinking the longer I remained here. Melanie, of course, and Jamie. Walter and Wes were two humans that accepted me; they were my friends after I arrived here. They're gone now; they died when I was still with Mel." As I do whenever I remember my lost friends, I close my eyes and take a moment to think of their kindness and loyalty to me. "They taught me that the Souls were wrong to come here. We shouldn't have taken Earth from the humans, I know that now."

"Well…. Why don't you do something about it?" he asks, his tone bordering on petulant.

Easy for him to say, the ghost of Melanie sneers in the back corner of my head.

Shush, I whisper back.

"I am one among millions," I explain gently. "The Souls are not ready to hear this, and if I were to reveal myself as having gone native, I'd be branded a traitor and removed from my host body. I would be sent to another planet, so far away from the people I love that they would all be long-dead by the time I'd reach my destination. And each of them would be taken by the Seekers, either to be killed or implanted as a means of finding information about other humans." My stomach heaves violently at the thought. "I would rather die than allow that to happen," I say, my voice adamant.

After a moment I add, "Jeb and Ian have been encouraging me to get in touch with my human selfishness, to just exist here in the caves, and do what I can to help our people survive. I have hope though, that your kind and mine will be able to coexist peacefully someday. I've seen evidence of it, and I believe that the longer Souls are exposed to the complexity of human emotions, the more they will succumb to them. Human love is the most powerful thing I have ever experienced, in all of my lifetimes."

"There's a lot to unpack there," Henry dryly informs me, a small smirk lifting the corner of his mouth.

"I have nowhere to be," I grin. "You are free to unpack, and I promise I will be truthful if I have the answer. Evidently, I'm an atrocious liar, so I cannot be deceptive."

This pulls an actual smile from Henry, but he tucks it back in as soon as he's aware he's doing it. He clears his throat again, his eyes darting away from me as a flush creeps up the side of his neck. "You called it going native... That's a pretty interesting term for it," he says.

I giggle, and scrunch my nose up at the sound of it. This host is so reactive, and some days I miss the control Mel had over her body. It was so easy to hide behind her instincts back then. But I'm bothered by it less now, as Eamon gets older and is reacting more and more to the expressions that dance so openly across my face.

"I can't take credit for it," I tell him. "Another Soul used it the first time I met him. We each had found our way to the humans on our own, and met when our two groups encountered one another. Burns believed he was the only one who had gone native before he met Sunny and I. Ian called me an expatriate before that, but I prefer Burns's term for what we are."

Henry's smirk is back. It isn't a full-on smile, but it changes his face into something so drastically different, it causes my breath to catch. The contrast reminds me of Kyle and Ian, back when Kyle was filled with sadness and wrath. His anger altered his face, differentiating him so starkly from Ian in my mind that it surprised me when they began to resemble each other once again. Two sides of a coin, Jeb used to say when he'd talk about the O'Shea brothers and their wild emotions.

"I like it," Henry says to me. Then, after a moment, he asks, "How is human love so different from what the...Souls...experience?"

He just called us by the closest thing we have to an accurate description of our kind here on Earth. My heart skips a beat, because he's trying.

I have to work to keep my answering grin from becoming too obnoxious as I think about how to describe the enormity of what this planet and this species has made me feel. "On other worlds, the hosts we inhabit do not have the range of emotions that humans do, nor the individuality. Souls exist to serve the whole, not the singular entity. So it was jarring, when I arrived in Melanie's body; Mel is nothing if not her own person. And then when I was put into this one, it was overwhelming all over again. This is my tenth life, and I am still learning something new every day as a human." He looks intrigued against his will, the way Jared did when he was just beginning to accept the duality of mine and Mel's existences. "I'm not sure why human love is so much more appealing, more meaningful to me," I continue. "I've been wondering about it for years now; I still don't know why it is so, but I remember when I realized it was what I wanted more than anything else in the universe. Jamie had gotten hurt while on a raid, and he was dying from an infection." He looks almost haunted by this information, and I recognize the expression on his face from my own memory – it is the face of a parent who is powerless to save their child. Mel told me that Henry cares for his sister Mia the way she and I do for Jamie, so the guilt of having sparked this fear is swift and hot in my gut. "That doesn't happen anymore," I speak quickly, anxious to get all the words out of my mouth as fast as possible so that I may quell his pain. "We did not have access to Soul medicines then, like we do now."

He nods many times in succession, as though trying to shake himself loose from the alarm that gripped him against his will.

"When it was happening, Melanie and I were so scared that he was beyond saving, but I came up with a plan to steal Soul medicines that would cure him. No one trusted us yet, not fully; they didn't believe that we would return to the caves once we were free. But Jared took a chance; he smuggled us out and we did it." I remember that horror and devastation Mel and I felt when it looked like there was no hope for our brother. It hurts to remember – or to imagine it happening now – to Jamie or even to Eamon; the thought of it makes me want to curl up and weep. Perhaps one day, Henry will realize that he and I are not such different creatures after all. "We saved Jamie's life, and I was so…. Melanie called it blissed out with love and relief, that it was clear to me there was no amount of ugliness or fear that could touch us. And in that moment I knew I never ever wanted to go back to who I was supposed to be, that I would never survive a life without the love that humans feel for one another. It was everything."

Henry simply stares at me as I finish speaking.

I've been human for a number of years now, but without Melanie in my head with me to give me input and correct my missteps, I still find it...tedious, to thoroughly discern the full-range of this species' facial expressions.

So it takes me what feels like the endless length of a whole minute for me to discern what Henry is feeling.

Incredulousness. Rage. Pity.

I shift back a few inches from him, the response automatic rather than conscious. A leftover vestige of my early days with the humans, when those emotions meant nothing but pain and fear being painted across my skin with fists and boots.

"You can't be that stupid," he practically snarls. "It's ridiculously naive to believe humans are all that good. It doesn't matter how nice you are, no one is going to like you that much, no offense."

I snort out a very inelegant laugh that I may be embarrassed by in any other circumstance. But I mean, come on. This is not news to me.

"That's direct," I say, mimicking the exact wry tone Ian once used when I asked him why he hadn't killed me yet.

"Have people just been lying to you this whole time?" he sputters, something like annoyance cutting ugly lines in the corners of his mouth.

I pause in my work, drawing in a deep breath that I try to imagine reaches all the way down to my toes. "No," I reply simply. "I may have been wearing Melanie's body when I arrived, but it was me who felt every single blow that was inflicted on it from the very first second I stepped foot in these caves." I have long since forgiven those who hurt me – how could I not? They were driven by despair, suspicion, and terror; each human who matters to me has made amends, never asking for absolution but always receiving it from me. "Jared, Kyle, and Ian have all sought their pound of flesh from me," I tell him. "I spent the first six months here scared out of my mind and covered in injuries. Jeb spent more time protecting me from them than he did taking care of the humans under his watch."

"Ian? As in, your husband?" he asks, his tone drenched in disbelief.

I nod. "Oh yes. The second time I ever really interacted with Ian, he strangled me until I almost lost consciousness."

Henry's eyes are as wide as they can get. "But…. But he fucking loves you." Henry hurls this at me like an accusation.

I can feel the blush that comes so easily to this body make its way across my chest. "He does," I agree. "It took me a long time to see it, but he absolutely does. He didn't always, though."

"Jared loves you too." Another accusation, said as if he can prove my words to be false.

"Jared was frightened and devastated when I showed up with Melanie's face," I explain. An unrestrained shiver runs up my back at the memory of Jared's harshness, so paradoxical to the easy smile he often wears these days whenever he and I speak, or to the tenderness he employs as he takes Eamon in his arms. "He needed time to believe in what was happening with her and I, but he came around eventually. Jared saved my life, in the end."

Henry chews on this before saying, "The other day, Jeb mentioned something about Kyle – that he was the epitome of a redemption story, or something."

Ian hates for me to talk about this type of thing; he doesn't want anyone to think that because people have hurt me in the past, it's something they can get away with in the present. But I told Henry that I wouldn't lie.

"Kyle tried to kill me," I say flatly. "He almost succeeded, too." The poor guy looks like I just reared back and headbutted him – something Melanie has threatened to do to Sharon many times since she got control of her body back.

"What?" he asks, his mouth open in what I interpret as utter shock.

"Kyle," I repeat. "Almost killed me."

"Your brother in law?" he interrupts.

I nod. Human relations are so bizarre, but Mel explained that if I went ahead and married Ian, I was tying myself to Kyle for the rest of my life. Needless to say, she was unenthused about the idea.

"Your brother in law tried to kill you," he states, as though I said it unclearly the first time.

"He did," I confirm. It took me a while to get used to saying the words out loud. I'd denied them for so long in the hopes of keeping Kyle's place in the community safe. To finally make peace with his brother, Ian asked that I be truthful with him about what actually happened; he needed to know, he said, in order to forgive him. So I was, and it became easier to talk about over time. It became my story of survival, not just something awful that happened to me.

"Who saved you?" Henry asks. "How did you survive?" He's gaping at me, no doubt picturing Kyle's large size and how he could easily wield his body like a weapon to cause harm to someone smaller than him.

I snort softly, imagining Mel's indignant voice in my mind. No one saved us, asshole.

Instead, I say, "Ian came for Mel and I, but an accident occurred that ended up knocking Kyle unconscious."

Tell him you saved Kyle, Mel whispers.

"I…," I start to say. Even after all these years as a human, I still have difficulty boasting about my accomplishments. I clear my throat, averting my gaze from Henry. "I saved Kyle, actually."

"What?" he asks, his voice incredulous once again. "You saved the guy who was trying to kill you?"

I nod, the phantom pains of my injuries from that day dancing across my skin. It doesn't matter that it was Mel's body and not this one, I can still feel the wet gasps for air in my lungs as Kyle held me underwater, as well as the helpless panic that raced through me when I wasn't able to allow Melanie control over our body to fight back. It all hovers in the corners of my consciousness, even here in the dry heat of the fields, far away and many years apart from when it happened.

Don't tell him the details, you can't risk someone else succeeding where Kyle once failed, Mel murmurs.

Just in case, Wanda, Ian's voice joins hers, a whisper against the shell of my ear. Just for me.

"Souls do not believe in wasting life – in causing harm," I explain softly. "I couldn't let Kyle go to his death, even though he wished for mine. Melanie and Ian were not very happy with my decision at the time," I admit with a rueful laugh.

Henry and I sit in silence for a while, but it feels more contemplative than awkward now, weighed down by all the things I've revealed and all the decisions he has yet to make.

After a while, in which weeds have been pulled and vegetables have been collected, Henry murmurs, "Everyone's been real emphatic about how they feel about you…. But...how do you feel about them? The people I've talked to, I mean." He keeps his eyes on the task in front of him, instead of meeting my eye, so he doesn't see the blush that immediately bursts across my cheeks.

Truly, it's completely ridiculous the way this body reacts to everything. Love, praise, joy, excitement, embarrassment, pleasure – I flush thoroughly and automatically without differentiation. Right now, it's due to the love and joy that I am overwhelmed with whenever I think of the people who I get to surround myself with every day.

God you're goofy, Wanderer. I can practically hear the taunting smile in Mel's voice.

I let my feelings for my wonderful humans wash over me, and it's like slipping into a warm bath. "Jeb is a wonderful friend, my first, I'd say, on this planet. He believed in me and cared for me before anyone else," I tell Henry, thinking of those terrifying early days in the caves. "I love Jamie like a brother, almost like a son. Melanie raised him, and I inherited her love for him before I even came to love him on my own. Jared is my friend – my family." It's always been hard on me to love Jared Howe, but loving him in this body made it less complicated. I trust him with my life, with Mel and Jamie's lives, with Ian's and Eamon's lives; it's as simple as that. "Melanie is my sister. You have a sister, so I can imagine that you understand all that that word encompasses." I would be remiss to try and explain it more thoroughly to Henry, I think. I would end up leaving something out, because there will never be enough words to describe what is between Mel and I.

"And Ian...," I let myself drift off, because it is hard to put what I feel for Ian into words as well. He is where my day begins and my existence will end. "Ian is an unconquerable spirit. That part of him helped to change so much of how I thought about my own kind and what we were doing. He is…. I have lived for thousands of your human years, Henry, and I have never once met someone like Ian. I have never loved anyone the way I love him." If I were so inclined, I could probably track the blush moving across my face and chest at this moment, but I try not to let my voice waver; this is too important.

Be brave, Wanderer, Mel says.

"The people you've met are kinder to me than most, but I hope you can forgive them their protectiveness and find your place with us here. This is a safe place for humans, but I am glad they have made room for me as well," I say. "Jamie once told me, you don't belong until you decide you do. And I think that's as true in your case as it was in mine."

Henry looks at me, his eyes soft for the first time since we started talking, and opens his mouth to say something when we're interrupted by a familiar cry.

Eamon.

I grin, my heart kicking up and my stomach warming at the mere sound of his high-pitched keening. My Eamon.

I turn to look over my shoulder and see Mel approaching us at a fast clip, her eyes narrowing as soon as her gaze locks on to who is sitting near me. She's got a bundle in her arms, and I can see Eamon's chubby baby legs kicking out below the crook of her elbow. His movements are sharp with an indignance that Lucinia tells me is something shared amongst all babies, and that Doc reassures me over and over again isn't caused by anything that I'm doing incorrectly.

I take a moment to quickly assess whether something is actually wrong with Eamon, but I'm swiftly reassured when I catch sight of Jared and Jamie trailing along in Mel's path, both of them rolling their eyes and alternating between calling Mel's name and gesturing at her back as though to say, can you believe this?

Mel comes to an abrupt halt at my side and flicks a steely-eyed look at poor Henry, but to his credit, he doesn't even flinch in the wake of the expression that has caused many lesser mortals to run from Melanie Stryder. His eyes are locked on Eamon's feet as Mel lets out a disappointed grunt at Henry's lack of response to her. I hold out my arms, automatically reaching to take Eamon from her. Mel acquiesces, and then runs an affectionate hand through my hair as soon as he's out of her arms. I lean into her touch, even as I arrange my son in my arms and reassure myself that he's fine, just fussy, at the moment.

"What's wrong, Mel?" I ask, keeping my eyes on Eamon. She offered to watch him today (practically snatched him from my grip, if I'm honest), knowing I would likely be meeting with Henry at some point. Ian and I figured it may be too much, too soon for the new humans to be faced with the knowledge that a Soul and a human were raising their human baby together. I just didn't expect to see her so early, is all.

"He wouldn't stop crying," she replies vaguely. I look up at her, arching an eyebrow in question. Mel has been nothing but confident when caring for Eamon, and I practically have to climb her to get my baby back at the end of the day. She says she's working on Jared about having one of their own, but for the time being, she's perfectly content to share my baby. More likely, something's going on here that I'm not picking up on; but as always, I'm too distracted by the child in my arms to devote much effort to figuring out what her motivations are. Mel knows this too, and I have no doubt she's using it to her advantage.

"Jesus Christ, Mel," Jared huffs as he and Jamie reach us. "Eamon's fine, and you know it." He looks over at Henry, who's gone more and more still until he resembles a statue in the dirt next to me, the longer he watches me interact with my son. "Hey, man," Jared offers him with a tilt of his chin. He doesn't get a response.

Jamie shoots a worried look at Jared, and then drops a hand on Henry's shoulder. Henry jumps like he was just struck by a live wire and blinks up at the two men towering over us.

"Oh, um," Henry coughs. "Hey."

"Hi Henry," Melanie replies, her voice syrupy and innocent. Jamie, Jared, and I exchange apprehensive glances, because Mel only uses this tone when she's about to punch an unsuspecting person in the throat. The day after I woke up in my new host body, I heard her greet Kyle in that voice moments before she tackled him to the ground and held a knife to his jugular. Jamie said it was because she was finally allowing herself to feel something other than anxiety over getting me back, and that it was better to just let her work through it on her own.

"This is Eamon," she continues, running a gentle hand along the shape of Eamon's tiny head. His wild black curls catch on her calluses, but her familiar touch calms his fussing momentarily. When she doesn't get any reaction out of Henry other than a brief nod, she narrows her eyes and plays her hand. "He's Wanderer and Ian's son."

To his credit, Henry doesn't do much more than blink rapidly at this new piece of information. I can practically hear Mel growling in my head, but honestly, it's incredibly obvious that Eamon is our child. He has Ian's black hair and my wild curls. His eyes are grey like this body's, but have flecks of Ian's sapphire blue speckled throughout. His skin is pale as moonlight, but Ian and I both think that someday it may freckle like my own. He's beautiful and curious and loved.

He's perfect, my Eamon Blue in the Dark O'Shea.

Ian and Melanie told me that humans sometimes name their babies in honor of something significant to them. Ian asked if we could name our son after his father, a kind man with a good heart and eyes that crinkled when he laughed. I agreed without even a hint of hesitation. He deserves to stay human, my Ian; he deserves to have everything he desires. He encouraged me to pick something that meant something to me as a second name – a particular detail that makes very little sense to me, but I'm told many humans have. Souls' names change with their lives, we don't just add on to them. But I thought and thought about it, and once it was there in my mind, I knew it couldn't be anything else. Blue in the Dark, I'd said as I traced the curve of my newborn son's cheek. It was what I saw when Doc took me out of Mel; it was a sight that gave me comfort in what I believed were my last moments, thinking of Ian's eyes as I drifted away from fear.

After I explained this, Mel looked irked and I was worried that I'd done something wrong, but she quickly explained it had nothing to do with my choice of name; she told me it was hard because that was the beginning of our separation, the first memory of mine she didn't have access to. She said that she wished she could have somehow stayed with me throughout the process of leaving her; she wishes she could have kept me company with her mind and kept me safe with her body.

When I told Ian why I wanted that name for our child, he took my face in his hands and kissed me until I was breathless and giggling. My beautiful Wanderer, he had whispered against my lips. You're so wonderful, and now you've given me a son with the perfect name. Welcome to the world, Eamon Blue in the Dark.

"Did I hear the dulcet tones of my nephew?" Kyle's voice suddenly bounces around the cavern, amplified so that it makes him sound closer than he is.

I lean back to look around Jared's leg and see Kyle jogging around the edge of the field, followed closely by Ian and Sunny.

"Fuck off, O'Shea," Melanie snaps, but her words are half-hearted at best, a sentiment easily expressed but barely meant. Melanie and Kyle have made their peace, but they're loath to admit it if anyone asks. It's simpler for them to fall into their prickly back-and-forth than it is to be polite to one another. I swear, humans are such a bizarre species.

Kyle completely ignores Mel, immediately making grabbing motions with his hands when he comes to a stop at my side. I pass Eamon up to him, smirking at the grumpy look that skitters across Mel's face. I know what she's thinking – she's mad that her plans to mess with Henry have been interrupted. Her gaze darts down to me, and she smiles bashfully when she catches me watching her.

Ian reaches down and helps me to my feet, his lips finding mine as one of his hands tangles in my hair and the other draws me tightly against him. When he pulls back, he kisses my cheek firmly and winks at me. It seems I'm getting my charming Ian today.

Sunny is cooing at Eamon who is being held firmly in his uncle's arms, while Kyle is making an idiot of himself, as Mel likes to say, his face contorting into exaggerated expressions so as to entertain his nephew. Mel has her arms draped around Jared's neck and is arguing good-naturedly with Jamie about her motivations for disturbing my conversation with Henry.

These humans, my family.

It's on the tail end of this thought that I catch sight of Henry stepping away, silently moving back from our group and down a side tunnel, disentangling himself from the bright orbit of our love.