Author's Note: Sorry for the sporadic updates at the moment – real life is busy right now! I've had this sitting in the pipeline for a while though and have part of the next chapter written, so the story is ticking along slowly!
A warning in advance that this chapter is not the easiest of reads towards the end - there's a bit more about involuntary infestation than there's been before, and the complexities of the relationship on both sides between Yeerks and involuntary hosts.
Worriedly, Alniss followed Carla out to the baking heat of the parking lot. She wondered anxiously what the human had to say, her heart pounding with worry. She half-hoped Carla would say she wanted to leave: considering how terrified the meeting clearly made her, that was the wisest course of action in Alniss' view, but something in the woman's body language told her otherwise.
"What is it?" Alniss asked, once they were safely out of the restaurant.
There was a long silence after Carla turned to her, her eyes on the jet-black tarmac. Eventually, she raised them with a sudden, forceful motion, and spoke quickly, as though if she didn't say the words now she'd never have the courage.
"Would you ever forgive me if I worked with Elsa?"
"What?" Alniss breathed. She would have been less surprised if Carla had burst out with a desire to be infested by Visser One himself, and couldn't say anything more for a few moments. "You don't want to, do you?" she managed eventually.
There was another long silence. "I want to help Kalran," Carla said eventually. "I don't want to spend time with her, but I'm beginning to feel it might be the best way forward. I haven't exactly done that well on my own."
Alniss hastened to reassure her, but had barely opened her mouth when Carla cut her off.
"I just don't know whether to trust her or not. She could easily drop us in it in the interview, accuse us of-"
Carla broke off suddenly, and Alniss could see tears glistening at the corner of her eyes.
"It's not your fault," Alniss said quickly, anger entering her voice as she reflected that this was the second person she loved who Elsa had made cry. "It's hers. Silrin was perfectly good to her, if she wasn't too stubborn to accept-"
"No."
Shock froze Alniss' insides, and she could say nothing for a few seconds. "What?"
"No," Carla repeated, reaching a hand up to scrub roughly, angrily, at her tears. "No, it's not Elsa's fault. It wasn't Silrin's, either," she added, presumably responding to the outrage creeping onto Alniss' face. "It- it wasn't either of them, it just... Elsa wasn't in the wrong."
"Neither were you," Alniss said after a moment, her better instincts winning against her natural defensiveness of her sister, not to mention her own desire to prove to herself she hadn't done anything wrong. She moved closer to Carla, taking her arm. Carla looked so distressed, so guilty and pained, that the desire to comfort her overtook all other emotions. "Tamli, neither were you. You couldn't have changed anything."
Silently, Carla reached to return Alniss' touch. Alniss felt a pinprick of hesitation as she pulled the human into a hug, nervous she might push her away as Jasmine had Akhir, but Carla instantly fell into the embrace, burying her head against Alniss' shoulder.
"How can she have forgiven me?" Carla whispered eventually, so quietly that had Alniss not been holding her, she would never have heard.
"You couldn't have changed anything," Alniss repeated uncertainly. She couldn't answer Carla's question, not least because she didn't believe that Elsa had forgiven anything. She was still very suspicious of the human's motives, and it was all she could do not to order Carla to walk away now and never look back.
"I guess," Carla said slowly. "Though she must have thought she could change things... or why keep fighting?"
Alniss bit her lip, painfully, to force herself to remain silent.
Carla noticed anyway. "Sorry," she said quickly. "This must be really hard for you."
Alniss hesitated, not sure she wanted to admit her struggle to Carla. For a few moments, she fought the instinct to make her host's wellbeing the first priority, to try and force down her own emotions, and lost.
"Yes," she admitted guiltily. "It is."
Carla said nothing, but squeezed the arm that was still around Alniss' shoulders tighter, rubbing her other hand up and down Alniss' other arm.
"I can't help remembering how much Silrin suffered. I... I know Elsa probably suffered more, but..." Alniss trailed off, struggling to voice the other feeling that was battling inside her.
"How do you feel about that?" Carla asked, more perceptively than Alniss would have expected. "About Elsa. She's... she's Silrin's host too, right? Just like I am."
"I'm not sure she'd agree with that," Alniss said, playing for time as her heart began to race.
"Yeah, well, it's how you'd think of it, right? I'm asking about you." Carla made eye contact, boldly. "You don't have to answer if you don't want, but... well, maybe you need to tell someone. And I'm not gonna tell anyone else."
Alniss looked down to the floor, unable to meet Carla's eyes. "It... it doesn't really matter." Years of Empire indoctrination and fear made it too difficult to voice her complex feelings. "Look, Carla, it's OK if you want to work with her. I... I don't want to make you unhappy."
"You never have," Carla said quickly. "Kind of the opposite."
Despite herself, Alniss felt her face pulling itself into a smile, and she dared a glance up. Carla smiled softly back at her.
"Are you sure you're OK with it?" She asked gently.
Alniss hesitated a long time before she finally nodded. "Yes. I- I won't pretend I'm keen on it, but I don't want to get in your way. It... wouldn't be right... just... you will be careful, won't you? Stay in public, where lots of people can see you?" Visions were crossing her mind of Carla lying in the gutter, beaten up or bleeding from a bullet wound. She tried to force the visions to stop by repeating to herself that Jasmine was still whole and healthy in spite of the amount of time she spent with Elsa... but then, Elsa seemed to tolerate Akhir a lot better than she tolerated Alniss... what might she do, for revenge on Alniss and Silrin?
"I will," Carla promised instantly. "I'm kind of scared of her, too." For a moment, Carla's hardened mask slipped, giving Alniss a glimpse of the fear and pain beneath. "Don't tell anyone I said that."
Shaking her head, Alniss reached to pull the human into a tight hug. "Of course not." She reached a hand up to stroke Carla's hair. "You're so brave. Every day I... I see more and more what Silrin meant when she talked about you."
She felt Carla's arms tighten around her in response to that. "I feel the same," she said quietly. "Silrin always said you were kind, kinder than most Yeerks she knew."
A warm glow built inside Alniss at Carla's words, and she pulled back, intending to respond. Before she could, however, the two were interrupted by the sound of a polite cough from beside them.
Alniss jumped, whirling round to see Elsa standing there, her expression anxious, fiddling nervously with the edge of her blue sweater, which was tied casually around her waist. For a split-second, Alniss felt her stomach tighten with concern for the host: the same concern she felt when Carla was upset. The emotion only served to heighten the anger at being interrupted that followed it, however. Alniss was far from pleased that she seemed, no matter her best efforts, unable to help caring about Elsa.
"What do you think gives you the right to interrupt private moments?!" Alniss snapped, before she could think about what she was saying.
Elsa smiled humourlessly: the cheek of it, Alniss reflected to herself, managing not to comment aloud this time.
"Sorry," Elsa muttered sarcastically. "Maybe if you don't have any privacy at all from the age of fourteen to seventeen it kind of skews the concept for you?"
Beside Alniss, Carla flushed, looking down at the dark tarmac. Elsa's expression softened instantly.
"Hey, it's okay," she said quickly. "Sorry, Carla. I didn't mean to, like, interrupt anything."
"It's fine," Carla muttered, eyes still on the ground.
"Maybe you should think about the effect of your comments," Alniss snapped, moving closer to touch Carla's shoulder. "It's alright, Carla."
Carla nodded, taking a deep breath and daring to glance up. Elsa smiled as Carla's eyes met hers, though her expression was still tense.
"I just wanted to say I'm going home now. Look, if you want me to do anything, or you change your mind and you want me to come with you to-"
"Yes," Carla said suddenly.
Elsa's eyes widened in surprise, and she tightened her fingers tensely around the sleeve of the sweater at her waist. "Yes?"
Carla nodded. "Yes, I want you to come. Well, that's not really true, I don't want you to, but I think it's probably best if you do." She paused, giving Elsa a hard stare. "I still don't know if I can trust you."
"Sure," Elsa nodded seriously, though a smile was creeping its way onto her face. "I understand that."
There was a short silence.
"When d'you want to meet?" Elsa continued after it, leaping straight into practicalities despite the surprise she'd shown. "Do you want to wait for another interview, or do you want to do something beforehand, just to chat?"
Carla looked as taken aback as Alniss felt. "I'm only doing this for the campaign," she said eventually, her words slow. "I don't really want to chat."
Despite herself, Alniss felt a twist in her gut as Elsa's face fell, and the girl dropped her gaze towards the ground for the first time.
"Sure, yeah. No problem," Elsa said, her voice flat.
Alniss frowned. "You're upset," she reflected. "Why?"
Elsa's shoulders tightened again, and she lifted her head quickly, rolling her eyes for the second time. "You know, I gave up letting Yeerks see all my thoughts six years ago, why start now?"
Alniss opened her mouth to give a sharp reply, but Carla beat her to it.
"You actually want to talk to me?" she asked, sounding utterly baffled. "Why?"
Elsa shrugged. "I don't really want to say, right now," she said, glancing meaningfully at Alniss. "It's fine, anyway, I get that you probably don't want to hang out. I'll let you know when we need your help for the campaign. Do you want my number, at least?"
"Sure," Carla said after a moment.
Alniss shifted uncomfortably as the two of them swapped phone numbers: she was far from happy about Elsa having a direct line to Carla, but she managed, somehow, to stop herself saying anything.
"Right," Elsa said, slipping her cell phone back into her bag. "That's that done, I guess. And... thank you, for coming today. I imagine it wasn't any easier for you than it was for me."
"At least I liked most of the people I was here with," Carla pointed out. "I guess in that way it was worse for you."
Elsa frowned. "I like Kalran, and I like Jasmine, and no matter what you might think, I like you. So no, not that much worse. And I knew Akhir'd try and be pretty neutral, anyway. She's got too much sense for anything else."
"Meaning I don't?" Alniss broke in, irritated.
"What do you care about what I think of you?" Elsa shot back. "I'm only a body to you, right?"
That stung Alniss far more than she cared to admit. For a few moments, she said nothing: busy fighting a memory that was pushing itself insistently into her mind.
Alniss slid out of Lar's broad ear canal into the waiting warmth of the Kandrona. She was excited: it was to be the first time she'd had to talk to her sister since Silrin had changed host from Taxxon to human. She could hardly wait to catch up, and hear what a human was like; Alniss had little experience with the new species they'd come to this world to acquire. She was proud of her sister, too, for earning the promotion the host had come with, and her body sizzled with the anticipation of sharing her schrellie's happiness as she swam away from the pier.
She followed the faint but familiar scent of Silrin deeper into the Pool, and soon picked up her sister's shape, the echolocation image so fuzzy and indistinct compared to the sharp sight of her host. Traitorous though the thought was, Alniss couldn't help reflecting that her other senses made up for that somewhat as she extended her palps towards her sister; no communication in a host compared to the depth of feeling, of understanding, that could be shared palp-to-palp.
As she stretched the thin extensions of her mind towards Silrin, however, she quickly became aware that something was very, very wrong. When her sister's palps touched her own, Alniss felt a powerful flash of pain, despair and guilt. It was so forceful that it nearly made Alniss shrink back into herself. She could feel that Silrin was trying, and failing, to hold back the emotion and the thoughts and images that came with it, which bled across their connection in disjointed little pieces.
Soon, memories began to flow across the connection as well. Silrin was sat in her host body at a table, a human object Alniss recognised from her work as a Gedd in the Yeerk pool cafeteria. Two taller humans and a much smaller one sat ranged around her; Silrin's mind supplied that these were her host's family.
"It's not fair," the small human, whose name was Annie, whined. "I wanna go to the Gardens too, and see the animals. They've got elephants. I love elephants."
Silrin had been telling her host's family as enthusiastically as she could about the upcoming Sharing trip to The Gardens. As enthusiastically as she could given that her host was screaming in her head, at a level Alniss had never heard, to stop talking.
(Shut up shut up shut up, you filthy little slug!) Elsa yelled, her impotent rage and pain stinging Silrin like over-salted pool fluid.
"I'm sure you could come," Silrin forced out, ignoring her host. "I'm sure we could find something for you to help w-"
Suddenly, Silrin's mouth stopped moving and her arm flew wildly, sending a water glass flying to the floor.
(Noooooo!) Elsa screeched inside her mind, her distress and fury spiking sharply, easily doubling what they were before as she threw her will against Silrin's control.
Silrin battled to hold on to her host as the two older humans and the child stared at her in shock.
"Honey, are you alright?" Elsa's mother's voice was concerned. "What on Earth is the matter?"
"Nothing," Silrin managed to gasp out. "I'm sorry, I don't even know how it happened, it... well, I guess we'll add it to the list of things that only happen to me. Must be the clumsiest person ever," she finished with a self-deprecating laugh.
The older woman's face relaxed slightly, and she gave a slight smile. "Oh, Elsa, honestly."
(Mom! No, Mom, can't you see, something's wrong! Mom, MOM!)
(Quiet, Elsa, please,) Silrin said. (Don't you see, you don't want them to find out, either, don't you know what would happen to them?)
That managed to silence the human, images flitting through her mind of her little sister's head forced into the Yeerk Pool.
(I hate you,) she spat bitterly at Silrin, her hatred and despair even more painful than the rage that had gone before.
'Alniss,' Silrin said desparately. 'What can I do? How can I... oh, Alniss, I..'
"Alniss?"
The voice was Carla's, the touch on her arm one of tentative worry. Alniss came out of her mind suddenly, the dry heat of the sun a sharp contrast to the memory of the thick, humid Pool.
Alniss shook her head, to clear it of the memory, turning to look into Carla's concerned eyes.
"I'm sorry. I was just... thinking." She belatedly realised her eyes were wet, and hurriedly wiped them, looking around at Elsa to see whether the human had noticed. Elsa's face immediately told Alniss that she had: while her expression was still disdainful, there was the tiniest hint of concern.
"Are you okay?" Elsa asked reluctantly. "Maybe I went a bit too far there, I guess."
"Yeah," Carla said sharply, before Alniss could say anything. "You did."
Elsa shrugged casually, her eyes not straying from Alniss' face. "Sure. Still. Is it true or not?"
"What?" Alniss breathed, uncertain. "What do you mean?"
"Is it true? Am I just a body to you?" Elsa repeated harshly, her eyes boring into Alniss'. It was still a surprise to her how different the expression was from the one Silrin had always worn when she'd spoken to her through the same face.
Emotions battled within Alniss: raw rage at what her sister had suffered, the pain she'd gone through; her own pride, whisperings of her early Empire teachings filtering through that yes, that was exactly what Elsa was, and she should tell her so; the powerful, instinctive care that, despite everything, she couldn't help but feel for Elsa, as her sister's host; and underneath it all, the tiniest hint of empathy, even guilt, for what Elsa had endured.
"I-" Alniss hesitated.
"Oh come on, isn't it obvious from her reaction?" Carla snapped. "Of course that's not what Alniss thinks. You don't have to push her like that, it's difficult enough for her."
Elsa raised her eyebrows, turning her attention to Carla. "You ever pause to think this might be difficult for me, too?"
"Sure," Carla snapped harshly. "But you've got your answer, right? Leave her alone."
"I want to hear her say it!" The volume of Elsa's voice increased for the first time, her breaths coming thick and fast with pent-up anger. "I don't think there's a Yeerk alive who I'm really just a body to, you know. I've met a lot of Yeerks and I've had a fair few in my brain, and I'm certain there's something instinctive in them that makes them connect with us, even if they hate us and we hate them, even if we never asked for them to be there. They all care about us, in one way or another."
Elsa paused for a moment, and her voice became deadly serious. "Of course, the Empire tells them they shouldn't feel that way, which puts them in a bit of a bind, right? My Yeerks' reactions to that have ranged from trying to compromise and be nice, trying to block it out and eventually moving on to someone who they hoped wouldn't hate them, to throwing their pain back at me in almost-constant mental torture, and I've covered a few of the shades in between that, too. Those last ones? Those were the ones who managed to lie not only to me, but also to themselves, that I was just a body and my feelings didn't matter, so forgive me for wanting to know exactly where she stands."
Glancing at Carla, Alniss could see her looking as visibly shaken as she felt herself, but as she watched Carla set her face back into its hard mask yet again. "I'm guessing they were a bit more determined about it than Alniss, then. Can't you see how upset she is?"
"I'm not," Alniss protested feebly, trying to force her emotions back. "I'm fine, Carla, I don't need you to defend me." Hesitantly, she turned to Elsa, her thoughts and emotions a whirlwind inside her. "The answer's no. Of course you're not just a body to me. How could you be, after everything Silrin-" Alniss cut herself off abruptly: she'd already said far too much, and she could feel the dam of tears inside her threatening to burst.
Elsa nodded slowly. "I appreciate you saying that," she said quietly. "And I'm sorry about Silrin. She..." Elsa hesitated, seeming to steel herself. "She was a good person."
Alniss' mouth fell open. "B- but..."
"She tried to be kind to me. What she did... it still wasn't okay, but she was better than a lot of Yeerks."
Alniss stared at her, shocked. There was silence for a few moments: all three of them seemed uncertain what to say next. Elsa recovered first, shaking her head, although she still seemed upset, her arms crossed in front of her body protectively.
"Anyway, look, I only came to say goodbye. I'll get in touch, Carla, when I've arranged something."
She began to turn away, to make the drive home alone with the weight of everything that had been discussed, and something in Alniss twisted at the sight. A part of her wanted to call out, to check the human was okay, but something stopped her.
As soon as Elsa's back had retreated a safe distance, Carla pulled her suddenly into a tight hug.
"Alniss, I'm so sorry. That was really hard for you."
"I'm fine," Alniss lied unconvincingly, tears still welling behind her eyelids. "And you? That can't have been easy for you."
"No, but I'm okay. Sure wasn't what I expected, though." Carla didn't sound okay, not really, but the tension in her body warned Alniss not to probe further.
Instead, she squeezed the human more tightly in her arms. "No. Me neither."