Author's Note: Just want to remind everybody that I acknowledge my pop culture timeline is sometimes off. More often than not, it's on purpose. Trying to fit everything into the late 90s timeline while still keeping these fics relevant fifteen years later is sometimes impossible. It's basically the only thing I ever knowingly break canon for, and I apologize if it bothers you.
#39 – Heart
Jake
Home is where the heart is.
I don't know who said that, but I do know they were wrong. Granted, I'm sure it was said in a time before the Yeerks came and made everything so damn complicated.
My heart is with my family. It was at the beginning, it is now, and it will be after it's all over. Doesn't change the fact that home is not my home, if that makes any sense. Sometimes I can live with it. But after an especially tough battle that makes me want to give up, there's nothing worse than having to retreat to a mockery of my home.
Home is supposed to be a safe haven. Somewhere to let my guard down, recharge the old Duracells. Get ready for the next one. I don't have that luxury. I walk into my house knowing that one of my enemies is sitting at the kitchen table, or watching my parents' TV, or talking on the phone to one of his Yeerk buddies while pretending to be normal. I know that one slip, one wrong word, one wrong look, could doom me. That's not the worst part; if that was the only consequence, I probably would have let go already. But it would also doom my friends. It would be the end of my mom and dad, if they're not slaves already. I don't think they are, but there's no way to be sure. It would mean the death or enslavement of everyone I've never met – the Prime Minister of England on down to the lowest beggar on the streets of Kabul are counting on me not to slip, and they don't even know it.
Dorothy said it better: there's no place like home. While she meant it in a completely different way, it applies to me. There's no place on Earth that makes me feel like my home. It's where I can be the most at ease, even if that's not very easy. Usually, I'm constantly paying attention to what Tom is doing. To what my parents are saying, listening for a slip of their own. Anything that tells me that there's more than one confirmed enemy sharing a living space with me.
Rarely, I can relax. Sometimes, I can slip on my headphones, zone out while looking at my computer, and imagine I'm someone else. That I'm somewhere else, somewhere truly safe. I can imagine that none of this is happening. It's rare, but it happens. I'm always brought crashing back to reality by something, though. Something as innocent as my mom telling me I have a dentist appointment shoots me right back into Animorph mode. I start thinking about ways to get out of it. What if he decides my wisdom teeth are getting too close to the gumline and wants to take them out? That would mean general anesthesia, and I simply can't let that happen. No telling what I might say to the dentist while I was under, and there's no telling if my dentist is really my dentist anymore.
This is the sort of thing I have to think about, worry about. This is what my life has become. And that's why I think I like Fall Out Boy's take on the relationship between heart and home best.
If home is where the heart is, then we're all just fucked.