Disclaimers:  Two of those mentioned aren't mine.  You'll know them when you see them.  One episode isn't true. You'll know which one when you get to that part. 
R, probably, although I'm not sure it needs a rating, other than 'Disturbing.'  At least, it disturbed me.
 

 We, The Living

Sometimes, things don't go from bad to worse.  Every now and then, the light at the end of the tunnel doesn't come with the roar of an engine.  Of course it doesn't happen often enough, or maybe it's simply that no one notices.  Living up here can make you cynical, though.

Well.  If you can call a belief that everything is completely screwed to the wall where it isn't mangled beyond  recognition 'cynical.'  For that matter, if you can call what we do up here 'living.'  I've got my doubts about both.

It doesn't really matter, I guess.  We're going home tomorrow -- those of us who lived.  Back to earth, that is.  It's not really home anymore.  Nothing is, except the labs.  They blurred those memories, and I'm glad.  Sleep is not overrated, and I don't think I was getting much towards the end there.

Strange, though.  With the more recent memories blurred, the older ones stand out more sharply.  I suppose the mind has to work with what it has?  I don't know.  Maybe I can ask Sam's brother.  She always said he was smart as hell.  I probably won't though.  What would be the point?  They couldn't save us, any of our brothers or sisters.  Why tell them what happened?  Even we barely know now, those of us who lived.  And it would only hurt them more.  They remember the years of our loss.  We don't quite remember the years of theirs.

We'll never tell them what happened, either. 

Oh, some of us know.  Some of us managed to keep the memories despite every attempt to wipe them, but we didn't admit to it.  Not even to each other, really, but there's something in the way Jane won't hold my gaze, a distant, drowning grief in Nigel's face when he thinks no one's looking... some of us know. 

People step back from war, sometimes.  Not by intent so much as instinct, a suspicion that the footing there is treacherous, or that the path only looks well-lit and pleasant but the destination is neither.  Our families did, I remember that much.  Stepped back and away, worked with our would-be invaders as if they were real, and never expected to get anything out of it except maybe their own skins intact... paid for with ours. 

They did what they had to.  One child per family doesn't change the math:  one gone to save many.  Children given for tests and experiments and sometimes just observation.  Two of us ended up pets, basically, until they couldn't stand it anymore.  Mara killed herself.  Pip just... went away.  The body was still there, but he wasn't in it anymore.  He always was a stubborn bastard.  Anyway -- a hundred children, maybe a hundred and twenty children, to save over a thousand lives by contract and maybe more. 

Some of us knew why we were here, you see.  Some of us... made sure we ended up in the labs.  Whether it took fighting them or volunteering, we made sure of it.  And then we got samples home, or tried.  Their mistake was letting us send letters.  We even got letters back once in a while.  Not often enough, but enough to know ours were making it, as we'd sent them.  We signed them in blood, licked the envelopes shut as thoroughly as we could, sealed hair and skin into the paste made with our saliva....  We sent back samples because our families needed the information and we couldn't get it any other way. 

We never let our 'hosts' know we were doing it, either.  That information we locked away from them, the same way Pip eventually locked all of himself away -- maybe his parents have the retrieval word for him.  We don't.  We tried. -- and we kept it hidden.  The same way Jane and Nigel and I hid the real reason we 'won'.  We hid it, and we held on, and we did what we had to do. 

'The aliens are leaving.'  No.  Not exactly.  The ones we dealt with for the last however many years, fifty or so, are already gone.  We never asked why, with such superior technology, they needed our help to take over the planet.  We should have.  They didn't 'leave' -- they were yanked home, maybe to their equivalent of reform school.  All that's left now is the truant officers who found them and the clean-up teams their society sent.  They're removing the Oil caches and the hybrids the way they cleaned our memories, and I hope they're better at that than they were with us.

And we're going down-planet tomorrow, for the first time in years.  Adults now, those of us who lived, with bodies in rags and memories in patches.  We don't know if all our families are alive.  We don't know if any of our families are alive, when you come down to it.  We don't know if we did any good at all, or if we sacrificed our youth and energy for nothing. 

We may never know.

I wonder how many of us will still be alive in a year.  Has anything kept us alive other than the job to be done, the people we wanted so badly to save?  (I can't remember how papa smelled, or what mama's arms felt like, but I remember how much I was willing to do to keep them alive.)  Will anyone meet us?  Will they know we're here?  Will it smell like home, or will I actually wish for the smell of ozone and Oil and recycled air?

Some men become what they're born for, do what they were always meant to.  Even when I distrusted Her, I always believed in Fate, just like my grandparents, like my brother -- although he always fought with Her. 

Are You done yet?  Have I given You everything You needed from me? 

Is it morning yet?

. . . 

Can I go home now?

<><><><><><><><>

Fog boiled up, stirred by the eddying convection currents the departing spaceship left in its wake.  Light and shadow fought their interminable war in shades of grey determined by the thickness of the fog and the overhang of pine trees or granite outcrops.  The nostril-pricking scent of ozone struggled with the tang of an ocean breeze.  Through it all, the lost souls in the clearing held steady, neither running for cover nor cowering on each other as their eyes adjusted to the light and their ears to the silence left by the ship's departure. 

Jane moved first, her usual quick limp almost a run as she flung herself into the arms of a red-haired woman too young to be her mother and a grey-haired man too like her to be anyone but her father.  That started the rush.  Parents and siblings, uncles and cousins, godparents or 'family' that didn't share DNA and didn't give a damn -- they were breaking from a solid mass ringing the clearing into a swirling mob of Brownian motion and family reunions.  English, American, French, German, Algerian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, they shared tears and hugs, blows and curses, until all that was left were a few families looking for children who would never come home, turning away at last, eyes dry and faces frozen as their hearts... and one tall young man still looking around to see if any of his family had lived to reclaim him. 

Offers to take him home with them met a cold, level stare, intimidation and affront in perfect wordlessness.  So they left him there -- finally, regretfully -- with money and three business cards left on a boulder, weighted down with a donated cell phone.

Chin still up, shoulders as straight as a mis-set, wrongly healed collarbone would allow, he waited until they were gone to sag down onto a fallen tree.

The husky voice came from behind, somehow going past patchy memories to settle into some part of his mind that he hadn't known he still held -- the part labeled 'Home.' 

"Genya."

Up was never in question, neither was around, or the arms that were out for the hug he suddenly needed more than air, more than the sight of eyes that shade of green over cheekbones of that slant that weren't his.  Gennadi locked his arms around his brother -- too thin, too tired, and too desperate to ever let him away again -- and buried his head against his brother's shoulder, suddenly grateful to be shorter still, if only by a few inches.  Just for a moment, he didn't care where they were going to go, or how'd they'd make it, or even what enemies had driven his brother to wait so long to come out and to have lost his arm.... 

I'm here.  He's got my back.  I've got his.  We will survive.  And thrive.  Somehow.  He knew his brother understood and agreed, even if the words weren't coming out, yet.  Well.  Other than the essential one. 

"Sasha."

<><><><><><><><>

Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse.  Sometimes our best efforts don't go amiss.  May it happen to you.

~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~
 

  Comments, Commentary, and Miscellanea:

Written for the Red Shirt X-Files Lyric Wheel -- you had to write from the POV of a minor character or OC.  Poem provided by Pollyanna.  Some of the underlying ideas worked out on early morning walks with Joyce.  Coffee by the grace of my husband.

Lines used, in part or in whole, marked with *.

"Sometimes," by Sheenagh Pugh 

Sometimes things don't go, after all, - *
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel - *
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war; - *
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.-*

Sometimes our best efforts do not go -*
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.-*
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen to you. - *

Feedback would be very much appreciated.

  survivors since 8/16/02
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