20 Thunderbird Lane, MHC #6, Monday Morning

[arboreal_priestess]

"Priestess." The mouse's voice was very soft and right in her ear. "Priestess."

"Mmmwha--?" Verity mumbled, barely conscious. She was exhausted after a weekend of running around with a child's seemingly inexhaustible fount of energy, followed by an evening of sugar and cartoons and--

Something about that scenario nagged at her, but she wasn't quite up to figuring out what it was. And, honestly, she didn't really want to. Because if she figured it out, she'd have to deal with it and these sheets were so nice and soft.

"PRIESTESS!" the mouse shouted, just as Verity drifted off again.

"What?" Verity snapped, cranky and aggravated. "Oh god, is it a holiday I need to be involved in?" And there was no Antimony to foist this off on, either. "Can't it wait until later?" She was whining, she knew. She wasn't proud of that.

"You are not needed," the mouse said calmly, tucking her arms back into her voluminous sleeves. "But the Parade Route goes through your bedroom."

"So?" Verity did not see why this required her to be awake. "Just try to be quiet when you go through."

"Then you do not wish to invoke the rite of Food For Privacy?" the mouse asked. "Very well. I just wished to ascertain that before we began."

"No," Verity said, her brain trying harder to pinpoint that thing that she was forgetting. "Why would I care about that now?"

Cartoons. Candy. And laughing with her new friend--

"We were not certain if your new friend should know of our existence or not." The mouse pointed to the other side of the bed, where another person still lay sleeping.

"Right," Verity said. "Fuck."

[For the one currently there and so much SP!]

Comments

[firstofitskind]

"Good to know," Liam said with a nod, absorbing all this. And now it was his turn to look as if he was trying to decide whether to tell her something. "Listen," he managed finally. "Turnabout being fair play and all, I suppose I should tell you that all the things I said as a- child-" and there was a weird hesitation there, "weren't the product of imagination either."

[arboreal_priestess]

"I was wondering," Verity admitted. She led Liam out of the spare room, leaving the mice to their holiday, and headed back to the kitchen where they could sit and chat. "Aliens and the Liberation, huh?"

[firstofitskind]

And that wasn't even the weirdest part of it!

"I don't even know where to start," Liam admitted. "I mean, the Taelons first came to Earth- publicly- around nine years ago, but they- and others- had been manipulating our evolution even longer than that. When they 'arrived', it was with a message of peace, and while most of humanity accepted this at face value, the Liberation formed from those who figured there was maybe something more sinister at work." Verity could probably see the issue with the timeline Liam presented, here, given his apparent age versus the age he'd appeared to be over the weekend.

[arboreal_priestess]

"But you..." Verity tried to figure out a polite way to ask her question. "Ahh, is that why they made your mother forget having you? So no one from Earth would know they've been poking around for years?"

She was assuming the Taelons were responsible for him in some kind of weird 'Mars Needs Women' kind of way.

[firstofitskind]

Well, if they'd never come to Earth he would never have been born, so they were responsible in a weird roundabout sort of way!

"Not- exactly?" Liam winced. "My father was actually the last of a different alien race called the Kimera," he explained. "Five years ago he escaped stasis on the Taelon Mothership, came to Earth, and used a human host and my mother to create, well. Me." He smiled, a little bitterly. "I grew into the body you're looking at in a matter of hours."

[arboreal_priestess]

And here, Verity thought her capacity to be surprised was exhausted. More fool her.

"That's--wow, okay, that's a lot to take in," Verity said slowly. "How'd they choose your mom to, uhh, be your mom?"

He'd said they'd erased all her memories.

[firstofitskind]

"Mostly right place, right time," Liam explained. "She worked for the Taelons, actually, which is why the Liberation felt they needed to erase her memory." He was still a little bitter about that, yes. Or maybe a lot bitter.

[arboreal_priestess]

"I, err...was she...did she volunteer?" Verity looked uncomfortable with asking, but it was a valid question. And she hadn't realized that she'd leaned over and reached for his hand in sympathy when she asked.

Spending the day together as little kids had kind of skipped over some the 'we're strangers' awkwardness.

[firstofitskind]

It was a valid question, uncomfortable or not. Liam's fingers curled around hers and he nodded. "The Joining wouldn't have worked if she hadn't consented," he assured her.

[arboreal_priestess]

Something eased in the lines of Verity's face. "But they still had to erase her memories, so that the Taelons couldn't find out if something ever tipped them off."

[firstofitskind]

"The Kimera frightened them," Liam said with a nod. "If they'd ever found out I existed, well- it probably would have ended about as well as the Covenant crossing paths with cryptids in your world." Da'an had been the single notable exception, but even that relationship had been... tense.

[arboreal_priestess]

You never wanted to trust that an evil organization would do something nice, just because they made an exception once.

"So you were born, her mind was wiped, and then you grew up in five hours," Verity summed up. "So how am I not talking to a little kid in an adult's body? Some kind of...accelerated learning...thing?"

[firstofitskind]

"Something like that," Liam nodded. "Genetic memory. Everything the three of them knew was passed on to me."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Oooh, that's handy," Verity said, more than a little envious. Just having that kind of knowledge at her fingertips...

"So, what are you supposed to do?" she asked. "You were conceived for a reason. Is this some kind of Chosen One kind of thing?"

She sounded sympathetic. Look, she knew a lot about growing up with your parents' expectations over your head and defining, oh, your entire life.

[firstofitskind]

"I was meant to act as a bridge between humanity, the Taelons, and a species they were at war with called the Jaridians," Liam explained. "Which really is a roundabout way of saying I was supposed to fix a problem the Kimera inadvertently created in the first place."

'Was' being the operative tense here.

[arboreal_priestess]

"That's not a lot of pressure or anything," Verity snorted. "Forge peace with three races when we can't even do that among ourselves here on Earth." She shook her head and drank more of her coffee. "So, then, what are you doing here?"

She'd noted that 'was' there, yes.

[firstofitskind]

"They were dying, and neither side was willing to attempt the solution to their mutual problem until it was too late," Liam explained. He'd also died in the process, but he was just going to leave that part out for now. It still gave him a headache to think about, honestly.

He was also still working through the guilt at both that failure and inadvertently being responsible for an even bigger (albeit much more short lived) alien threat.

[arboreal_priestess]

Goddamn. Liam had managed to live a worse life in five years than Verity had in twenty-two.

"Nice to know that stubborn, bullheaded refusal to listen to reason isn't exclusive to humanity in your world, either."

[firstofitskind]

"They were scared," Liam said with a shrug. "I was asking them to give up what they were and become something new. But yes, essentially. And then I found myself without a purpose. Or a paying job, for that matter. So, I came to Fandom in an attempt to actually experience, you know, a life of my own."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Well, this is one hell of an experience," Verity said with a chuckle. "Though one you're not likely to get outside of the island. Did you enjoy your weekend-long childhood, then?"

[firstofitskind]

"You know, I really did?" Liam admitted with a grin. "It wasn't something I ever thought I would get to experience, so it was... fun. Especially since I had someone willing to show me the ropes, as it were."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Well, those weren't really the normal ropes," Verity said with a self-conscious laugh. "Most kids don't play hide and seek with pit traps, for examples. Or capture the flag with live steel. Our upbringing was--different."

[firstofitskind]

"Makes sense, considering the family business," Liam nodded. "I remember you asking me if I was armed when we first met," he recalled.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Just with dart guns," Verity said. "We weren't allowed to use live ammo until we were older."

Knives, sure. But guns were more dangerous and their parents felt they needed to be older and have more training before using those regularly.

[firstofitskind]

"Sensible," Liam agreed. "But despite all that, you still knew all the important stuff- like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And cartoons."