the animorphs

[instar]

Renée is gone in the morning, a pot of maple oatmeal for the girls and Trouble cooling on the stove and a note on the fridge, she's going to be gone all day on a day trip to Tucson with her friends.

Andi wakes up first. Bella's not far behind.

Comments

[instar]

"I don't know either. But if I run headlong into something that turns out to be a huge problem for you, I cannot safely replace you, and that's if your reaction is 'flee to Australia' and not 'sell us to the invading force'. Anybody could be piloted by a Yeerk, to say nothing of your particular talents as bear bait and so on."

[aeskhyne]

"I'm not gonna sell you to the invading force," says Trouble. "There is nothing that could get me to do that on purpose. Not really keen on fleeing to Australia, either." He sighs. "What I mean is... fucking things up with me is pretty easy, some ways, there's stuff I'm touchy about. But fucking things up with me forever is really hard. For you, anyway."

[instar]

"Temporary screwups could jeopardize delicate things, too."

[aeskhyne]

"Sure," he says. "But, like, I know that. If you manage to piss me off in the middle of kidnapping your dad, I'm not gonna bail on you out of spite."

[instar]

"Okay. That's good, then."

[aeskhyne]

"For that matter, if he manages to piss me off, I still won't bail on you. But I might wanna stay out of his way as much as possible."

[instar]

"I don't anticipate needing you to spend much time in close quarters with Charlie."

[aeskhyne]

"Okay, good."

[instar]

"It would still be good if I could avoid pissing you off."

[aeskhyne]

He shrugs. "Yeah. But - I don't know, I didn't know you were going to say the thing that set me off this time until you said it, I don't know how to guess what the next thing might be. Do you?"

[instar]

She shrugs. "Do you have a reasonable model of me being desperate, paranoid, overclocked, and some amount of traumatized? Because that's how I'm going to be for the foreseeable future."

[aeskhyne]

"Nnnot really," says Trouble.

[instar]

"Then that makes it harder to guess. And I can guess what I'll do but not which of those things will upset you."

[aeskhyne]

"...I could try to tell you what about that thing just now got to me," he offers, "if that'd help."

[instar]

"Potentially very much."

[aeskhyne]

"It's something like... it seemed like you didn't know that I'd think about what it might do to you before running off and planting explosives somewhere," he says. "Like you figured that was a pretty obvious thing for me to do and you had to warn me off it because I wasn't gonna get there myself unless you gave me a shove. And there's something about the way you said it, too, but that's harder to nail down - I could just say I don't like it when somebody tells me what not to do, but that doesn't get all of it."

[instar]

"You don't work the way I work. I don't know you the way I know my twin. I can model you, but sometimes I think my model of you is pretty terrible. I don't like to trust it if there's a way I don't have to. If you ran off and planted explosives somewhere thoughtlessly, it would - I wouldn't assume that it would happen if I forgot to mention that it shouldn't, but it would fail to stun me the way it would stun me if Andi did it."

[aeskhyne]

"Okay," says Trouble. "So... maybe say that? I mean, if something like that comes up again? There's a big difference between 'I don't really think you're gonna do this, but it's important enough to check' and 'I totally think you're gonna do this, so don't'. First one I can handle. What you said came off more like the second one."

[instar]

Bella writes this down.

[aeskhyne]

"Think we can dig up any more land mines this way?" he says wryly.

[instar]

"Maybe. I don't know. Can you tell me what else sets you off?"

[aeskhyne]

"...Well, there's the thing about being told what not to do," he says. "Rules. Threats. But not just threatening threats. Like - you remember when I made my first pie for you guys, I wouldn't eat any vegetables? It was 'cause someone was telling me I had to if I wanted any pie. Not much of a threat, but it counts. And on the flip side, not every time somebody tells me to do something is a show-stopper - I was all right with Elfangor telling me to run and hide."

[instar]

"What makes the difference?"

[aeskhyne]

He shrugs. "I'm not exactly sure. Something about - context, maybe. What it meant."

[instar]

"Renée wanting you to eat your vegetables meant that she was trying to play the role of the responsible adult who cares about your vitamin intake. Does that fit into some category that might generalize better? I mean, is it - per-case or is there a pattern I could learn?"