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Tom’s alarm clock goes off and he slams the snooze button before he freezes.
He has control over his body.
He’s in his bedroom.
The last thing he remembers before waking up is— is—
His stomach curdles and he shoves himself out of bed, just barely making it to the bathroom, forcing the door open and his way past Jake, who lets out an annoyed shout as Tom lunges past him for the toilet, and a disgusted noise a moment later.
There’s nothing left in his still-churning stomach by the time his dad knocks on the side of the bathroom door frame, looking down at him with concern. He’s missing the worry lines on his face that Tom remembers from the last time he saw his parents when the Yeerk was taking them to the—
“There’s supposed to be a nasty stomach bug floating around,” his dad says. “You’ll be alright staying home on your own?”
“Yeah,” he answers, mouth sour, feeling sick, feeling heady, and not for any of the reasons his dad thinks. “I think so.”
He slips back to the bathroom after his parents and Jake leave.
Tom’s reflection is younger too, just like his parents; probably Jake, too, not that he got a good look when he was making a run to puke in the toilet. He’s baby-faced, no stubble catching against his fingertips.
His body is all his own, every limb, every finger. There’s nothing controlling him.
There’s nothing in his school planner— a habit he picked up freshman year of high school that both Yeerks had been forced to keep up— about the Sharing. Just school assignments, basketball practices and games.
It’s a whole month before he went to the first Sharing meeting.
All because he was interested in a girl.
This time, he doesn’t let himself get lured in by Jennifer Herrera. He fills his time with working out, doing exercises and basketball drills with an at first confused, but still thrilled Jake, and catching naps when he can.
He needs the sleep because every night is filled with nightmares, over and over and over. Betraying his parents, hurting his brother, getting killed by-
Tom is sick of the nightmares by the time summer rolls around and freshman year ends.
He didn’t get to appreciate high school enough the first time.
The Yeerks had already taken his life from him before he even had a chance for it to really begin or start to talk about his dreams out loud.
In freshman year, he had already had quiet thoughts about getting into Brown, Stanford, Rice. Duke. Somewhere with a good pre-med program to become a doctor like his dad.
But he had never said anything, and he had been a controller for long enough by the time he was expected to start looking at schools that the Yeerk was able to do whatever it wanted, and what it wanted was Tom to stay in town.
His parents had never said out loud that they were hurt or disapproved of the fact ‘he’ only went to community college, but they never got the chance to know he never wanted that in the first place.
Summer break goes by, and the nightmares lessen with every day that Tom affirms his control over his body and himself, mostly by physically wearing himself and everyone in his vicinity out. Tom puts Jake through the wringer as much as he's allowed to, to the point that Jake begins to leave the house to hang out at Marco's instead and Homer ends every day as a furry lump that's flopped over on the living room carpet, unwilling to move.
The working out doesn't escape attention.
"You should go a bit easier on yourself," his mom says one night at the dinner table, eying his arms. "You don't want to hurt yourself, even if it's still a few months before try-outs."
"I'm not going to hurt myself," Tom answers. "I'm not working out that much."
He's in the best shape he's ever been in— even before— but he doesn't know what to do with it. Just sports isn't the answer, but neither is he sure that taking on the Yeerks alone is possible.
Sophomore year starts up, and with it, the nightmares crank up again the closer it gets to October, but even the week he knows it's supposed to happen, they're still not as bad as that first month.
On his birthday, and then on Jake's, he avoids Aunt Naomi's kids as much as he can without it being obvious. They're all younger than him and girls, so it's not that difficult to do it without seeming like a jerk. It isn't because he wants to avoid all of them but— even Jordan, with her dark hair and eyes looks like her. The three girls are sisters. It'd be weirder if they didn't resemble each other.
If anyone notices, they don't say anything about it.
Tom knows it's started when Jake drags himself into the house just barely before curfew one night and the next school day a police officer goes snooping around his campus.
Most of all, it tells him something he hates to acknowledge for himself; but keeps springing into his thoughts in Temrash's voice, sneering at him, mocking him inside his head. You're not brave. You're a coward. You'll stay here rather than die.
He's supposed to be responsible; he's the oldest, not just older than Jake, but the oldest out of his cousins, too.
He does his best to be a good son and older brother, but bravery isn't something he can claim.
If it was, he'd be doing more than lying awake at night, listening for Jake's comings and goings.
Once, he even covers for his empty bedroom with their parents, and it works just long enough for Jake to not get in trouble or get clued in.
He hears Jake thrashing in his sleep through the wall separating their rooms one night, and something about it pushes him out of his own bed and out of his room. If it happened the first time, Temrash must have kept his body asleep; neither of the Yeerks that controlled his body cared that much about how humans acted or why, and just did what they had to blend in. On his own, it's enough to wake him from the light sleep that's all he's able to manage these days.
Tom is terrified at the idea of being caught by the Yeerks again, terrified at the idea of going against them, of what they could do with the knowledge inside of his head.
But checking on his little brother doesn't have any of those risks, as far as he's aware.
He shakes Jake awake, and he looks up at Tom confused and bleary.
"What?"
"You were having a nightmare. I could hear you in my room. Everything alright?"
"Oh. Yeah." And just like that, Jake shoots into a sitting position, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with balled up fists, back completely straight. "Yeah. Everything's fine."
It's such an awful lie, totally blatant, and one he could easily call him out on, but Tom doesn't. Not directly, at least. Instead, he sits down.
He could say something, but what is there to say?
Telling Jake he knows won't help anything. It will just put a bigger target on them. What happened is out of the question, for so many reasons.
He doesn't even want to lie that things are going to be okay.
Instead, after sitting next to him in silence for long enough, he bumps his shoulder against his brother's. "Try to get some sleep, okay?" He stands up.
Jake looks up at him, expression serious, saying nothing for long enough that eventually turns for the door.
"Tom?"
He stops, hand on the door."Yeah?"
"Thanks."
Tom gets his driver's license, and unlike before, Jake bums rides off him. The Yeerks that enslaved him never cared or were curious that Jake never did. They weren't that kind of creature.
But now, sometimes Jake will ask for a ride to his friends' houses— the others masquerading as Andalite bandits— and sometimes to the mall.
It hits peak weirdness when Jake, serious-faced but trying to not look tense, asks him for a ride to Cassie's, Marco and her right behind him.
There will be no escaping the car if he says yes, not without looking insane. Or without making things worse.
Whatever is going on is not just apparently serious, but something they need a cover for, and one Jake is willing to trust.
He swallows the bile in his throat, as casually as he can. "Yeah, fine." Tom raises his voice. "Mom, I'm taking Jake, Rachel and Marco to one of their friend's. That okay?"
Her voice answers from the home office. "Yes, but drive carefully! You can pick him up when he calls."
"I will."
Jake rides in the front with him to give the directions to Cassie's that he's not supposed to know well.
Tom blasts music the whole time to forget about the fact she is sitting behind him. It sort of works. He hadn't been that too into music before the Yeerks except casually, and both Yeerks preferred silence. Since waking up in control of his own body again he hasn't been able to tolerate it.
Jake hangs back instead of getting out, looking at him thoughtfully before speaking. "Can you be a bit late?" he asks. "Before you come get me?"
Curfew rules don't apply if the person picking them up is late. Tom doesn't have that anymore since he drives, but Jake does, and it snaps into place. "How late?"
"At least a half hour." Jake pauses. "If you can."
"I can figure that out."
Jake slides out of the car, and Tom pulls out of the driveway.
He's able to manage the better part of an hour and gets his parents mostly off his back when he returns by having the gas filled and saying that the car was running out. It works, because his dad has a habit of filling up only when it starts to blink that it's low.
He can't help but notice that Cassie— the one who made things so much worse— watched him the whole time, both dropping Jake and the others off, and then picking them up.
Tom sleeps the whole night for the first time.
Tom sleeps more. Jake sleeps less.
How much he can do is limited, too afraid to do more or reveal what he knows, but after playing soccer mom just once for the crew of middle schoolers doing their best to hold off the invasion, he ends up in a dangerous balancing act with Jake; Jake asking for help in the most oblique of ways, and Tom helping in the vague ways he can. Neither putting everything on the table, neither saying anything. Never direct, never broaching the surface, however much it could be tempting.
Then again, Tom doesn't find it tempting to know exactly what Jake and his friends are doing. He doesn't want to know; it's too dangerous, too hazardous.
He isn't brave enough to play hero.
Somehow Jake is, and he watches it wear on his younger brother, even as he doesn't know how any of them manage to do it.
Push and pull; give and take.
He never asks; Jake never explains.
Tom keeps up the basketball and joins the school's debate team; some days it feels stupid and useless, but other days it's there as a reminder that if there's going to be something on the other side, he still needs to concentrate on the future he didn't get to have last time. If he's feeling hopeless about everything, depending on how long it takes for the Yeerks to totally take over, being a doctor will mean he'll at least have a less crushing physical existence for at least a bit.
Jake doesn't try out for basketball this year, even though he lets Tom pull him into doing practice drills and talking strategy with him.
He's younger than he feels; 'almost nineteen' once doesn't count for a lot when he didn't get to experience most of his teen years himself.
By the same measure, his younger brother is older than he looks.
Sometimes, when their parents aren't around to notice it and Jake lets his guard down, his serious gaze grows haunted and intense, solemn in ways that don't fit into the nice neighborhood they live in that's filled with expensive houses and fancy cars, like he belongs on National Geographic or Time or in some documentary with a serious-voiced narrator instead.
Tom can't ask who nearly didn't make it, how many people died in front of you this time; instead he goads Jake into talking about baseball and the home run chase; Jake thinks that Sammy Sosa will break the record first, which Tom can only guess is because Jake sees him as the underdog.
Saddler still gets hit by a car, but he goes into surgery. There's no sudden miracle with a devastating end, but Saddler is probably going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
Tom doesn't ask why or make any guesses.
When their mom's grandfather dies, it is not filled with fighting like it was last time; there is no Yeerk in his head to demand to stay, no attempted assassinations on his dad; Tom is not a key part of the Sharing's recruitment methods.
Instead, he takes the SATs and attempts to focus on getting ready for college, even though he knows there's a war going on and his brother's in the center of it.
Senior year comes around, and with it as an early eighteenth birthday, a car.
Tom didn't get a car last time.
His parents love him more than they did the Yeerk who was pretending to be him, not that they knew then or now.
It shouldn't make him feel better about everything, but it does, just a bit.
It also means he's been put in charge of hauling Jake to school, now that Jake is sharing a school with him for the first time since they were in elementary school.
Sometimes the carpooling includes Marco, Cassie, and Rachel, and he's asked to drop them off at Cassie's. Every time, he does.
He can feel Cassie's stare aimed at him the whole time, every time.
Sometimes Jake asks him to cover for him when it comes to taking him to school or going back home. He does, every time.
Their parents trust him; they accept Jake being late or disappearing or keeping weird hours based off Tom's lies.
He puts in his application for Stanford in early.
He gets in.
He accepts.
He can see the seething tension in Jake the closer it comes to the move-in date for the dorms, for him to leave home. Their parents mistake it as nerves over the fact that Tom is leaving.
Things are getting worse, he can tell.
But Jake doesn't say anything, for him to not go, to put off school.
Jake finally breaks his silence after they help him move into his tiny dorm room, and their parents leave first.
"If people come for you or try to get you to go somewhere you don't want to go, don't go with them, okay?" Jake offers no explanation, and Tom can already tell that Jake must be on the verge of desperation to even over that much of a hint, even after the last few years.
It's not that easy, he wants to say. Or I'd die first. But he can't, and he's not sure if the second would be a lie or not.
"I'll do my best," he answers instead, and messes with Jake's hair. "Take care of yourself."
Jake pushes away, but looks grateful.
The house blows up when he returns home for winter break, one night when Jake is gone.
The Yeerks have found out.
He doesn't know how, or what happened or—
The only thing he knows right now, with a gash down his leg and a cut somewhere on his head that's getting his hair gross with blood, that he hadn't really figured out until just now, is that he wants to live, he wants his parents to live, and he doesn't want it to be with any of them held captive by the Yeerks.
"Tom—" he hears his dad coughing from all the dust and smoke, "Tom—"
"We need to get out of here!"
"What?"
"We need to get out of here before the firefighters and police show up—"
"Tom, what are you talking about—"
"We need to get out of here, now! It's not safe now and it's not going to be safe with the police or anyone else!"
He doesn't know what his dad sees in his expression, but he doesn't argue with Tom, and he doesn't know how much that should scare him.
It was plain bad luck.
Their family was the last on the list to be evacuated and the first the Yeerks decided to go after.
He doesn't find this out immediately, though.
Tom is able to find where Jake and the others are, with some effort and guesses based off of what he remembers from the last time. It takes over a day of increasingly close calls.
Jake approaches the driver's side door first, and Tom gets out, relieved for just a brief moment before he catches the hard and serious expression on Jake's face before his brother's form changes into that of an andalite's instead, and its tail blade swiftly moves to his neck.
Jake comes out from behind the trees, both serious and apologetic looking.
"I'm not a Yeerk," Tom says.
"He's been acting strange the whole time," Marco answers, and all of them have their attention focused on Jake. He was aware from the last time that Jake was their leader, but it didn't have the chance to sink in until now. Even the andalite, its blade to his throat, is looking to Jake.
"I got our parents out."
He isn't sure what that expression is on Jake, not really, but the closest he can think of— and it's so long ago— is from when Tom started kindergarten and Jake, not yet three, was trying to not cry and be upset at his big brother leaving him. .
"Keep them tied up and in confinement for now," Jake says, finally, "Just to make sure."
After everything, Jake tries to ask.
"How did you know?"
"Does it really matter?"
Tom has a waiting invitation to return to school when he wants, and Stanford has all but explicitly extended the invitation to Jake, too. A full ride for both of them.
But he hasn't gone back yet, which is why he's in a hotel in the Hague with his brother, acting as support. The North Sea is visible from the window, the lights of the ships out there blinking in the darkness. There's an NBA game on the TV, which neither of them are paying attention to.
"No, I guess not."