Private Home Again

[Inanna Harth]

"What are you talking about?" Inanna asked playfully. "Not real? Doesn't this feel real?" She pinched him. "Does this?" She kissed him. "Or, oh—how about this?" Taking his hand, she pressed it to a spot on her stomach, where he would receive a kick against his palm.

Still, she looked at him curiously. "Before what goes too far? We have time."

Cato Harth

 

[Cato Harth]

"What are you talking about?"

"Listen t-"

"Not real? Doesn't this feel real?"

"Just-"

"Does this?"

"Inanna-"

"Or, oh—how about this?"

"Pleas-" Each time before he was interrupted. But not that time. That time, he fell silent because of what he felt. Cato looked down at her belly, where his hand remained frozen. He glanced back and forth between her, and the life she was carrying, "I..." Cato frowned, already mourning something he knew wasn't real. The lost opportunity. The one only a fantasy could create.

But it was still just a fantasy.

"Inanna..." He reseted his palm against her cheek, "...You're in a dream. We're in a dream. Your dream. That... that moth. It's making all of this up. We need to get out. You need to get out," He shook his head, his breath warbling nervously, "Please. Please fight it."

Inanna Harth​

 

[Inanna Harth]

Inanna blinked, her eyes searching his face. Her expression flickered, awful understanding beginning to dawn on her…

But then a knock on the door drew her attention away from Cato. “Mom?”

“What is it?” Inanna asked.

The door opened to reveal a Keshian teenage boy, his black hair bedraggled and a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. He pulled the toothbrush out before speaking. “Ophelia offered to take me to school in her speeder. Is that okay with you?”

Inanna nearly felt her heart stop at the sight of him. He was older than she remembered, of course. Here in the dream world, Galahad was allowed to grow up. He wasn’t frozen in her memory forever at age twelve, nor was Ophelia permanently fourteen. She’d be old enough to drive a speeder by now.

“That’s… that’s fine,” Inanna said. “Check on Serena, would you? Stay safe. I love you.”

Galahad closed the door. Inanna turned to Cato. “What am I supposed to do?” she whispered. “Give all of this up? Please don’t ask that. Not yet. Just a little bit longer…”

Cato Harth​

 

[Cato Harth]

Cato's heart cracked at the flicker on Inanna's face. The growing realization of the truth. They both looked up as another voice broke the silence. It was a boy, one he didn't know. Not by looking at him, at least. But he quickly put two and two together as the interaction played out. This time, his heart fully broke. He could only sit there and watch.

The door closed, leaving them alone again. Cato searched Inanna's eyes, "…It's not real," He muttered, almost whispering. Gently he placed a hand behind her neck, and pressed their foreheads together. He sighed, and air of uncertainty in the noise indicating that he was seriously considering what she asked of him, "…When this ends… Can you go on knowing it won't be… this?" That her kids would fade back into dream. That this world would disappear.

Inanna Harth​

 

[Inanna Harth]

That was just it, wasn’t it? None of this was real. It was a lie designed to keep her complacent. Giving her a taste of things she could never have, making a mockery of her grief and suffering.

As the veil was pulled from her eyes, she felt a surge of anger, almost homicidal in its intensity. She wanted to kill the moth. Exterminate the whole species. As soon as she got out of this dream world…

The baby—the fake baby, which wasn’t really growing inside her—the moth made it feel like it was moving again, nudging her with what might’ve been an elbow or a foot. How the hell it was able to draw on an experience she’d never actually had, to make it feel that real, she didn’t know. But it was like water thrown on the blazing fire of her rage, leaving her only with an overwhelming sorrow.

If she stayed here, would this imaginary child eventually be born? Would she hold it in her arms, watch it grow? And what about her other children—would she see Ophelia and Galahad become adults, have careers, get married, have kids of their own? How far would it go? She knew it would all have to end eventually. The moth needed only a few days in real time to complete its transformation. But here inside her head, she could live out a whole life in a single dream.

She might never recover from the loss of an entire false life. She’d lose her mind, go mad with grief.

Cato seemed to be thinking the same thing, as he pressed his forehead to hers. “I… can’t let this go on, can I?” she asked, her voice hollow. “Staying will only make it hurt worse…”

The dream world around them began to fade away, replaced by the familiar outlines of the veranda outside her childhood bedroom, bathed in the rays of the rising sun. But it wasn't quite enough. Inanna was weak-minded even against a damned insect, struggling to disrupt its influence over her brain and body. This particular specimen must've had a very strong sense of self-preservation.

"Help me," Inanna pleaded, clinging to Cato as she tried again to fight it.

Cato Harth​

 

[Cato Harth]

Cato couldn't imagine what she was going through. All of the grief Inanna had already suffered, now made into a veil of manipulation by another being. It would be enough to make him angry, wrathful even, if he weren't so much more overcome by sadness. To think, even if just for a moment, that this could be real. To have it brought to such a lifelike potential, only for it to inevitably be ripped away. He shook his head as they remained frozen there, and whispered, "…I'm so sorry."

The world around them shifted and changed, but Inanna had yet to overcome the deep sleep in its entirety. Cato lent his own fortitude to the pushback. Even as he did, he sought to comfort her, "We'll build a perfect life of our own. We'll build our happily ever after," He smiled sadly, "I promise."

Inanna Harth​

 

[Inanna Harth]

“It doesn’t need to be perfect,” Inanna murmured. “It just needs to be real.”

Cato’s strength helped, but the final push was violent. One last gasp, then the dream world seemed to burn up around her, lighting her nerves on fire.

Inanna sat up, but it was only the heat of the sun against her skin. She was back, the hammock swaying gently beneath her.

Right?

Her hands went to her stomach. Nothing. Empty.

The feeling of loss hit her hard. She curled in on herself, arms wrapped around her middle, forehead against her knees. Maybe she would cry over it later, but for now it just left her breathless.

Cato Harth​

 

[Cato Harth]

Cato gasped, as he awoke once again to the sight, sound, and touch of reality. It had not been his dream, but the transition between the two was no less jarring. They were still there, stuck in the hammock as if nothing had happened at all. There was even a flicker of a moment, where Cato couldn't help but wish that it had all just been his own dream after all, one from which he was only just now waking.

But he saw Inanna curl in on herself, and he knew there was no such luck. He held her tenderly, and rested his chin atop her head. Cato let the silence sit for a good long while. When he did finally speak, his mouth was dry, and his voice strained, "…What do we do about… about this… thing?" The moth was still inside her, after all.

Inanna Harth​

 

[Inanna Harth]

Inanna melted at Cato's touch, sinking into his arms, breathing him in. To think how different things had been before she fell asleep. She felt like she had aged another century in mere hours...

His hands, should they roam over her back, might find the hole left by the chernamila's burrowing somewhere between her shoulder blades. The wound was roughly the size of a finger in circumference, and it remained open through some chemical means which prevented her body from healing it over. Now that the creature's influence was broken, it was sore and tender to the touch.

"It's already dissolved its body," she muttered. "Nothing but a nervous system is left, connected to mine. They can try to remove it surgically, but usually at this point they just let it do its thing." Something angry and vengeful rose up in her at the thought of letting the moth live after what it had done to her. "I want it out now. Do you think we could use the Force to kill it?"

Cato Harth​

 

[Cato Harth]

Cato winced uncomfortably as he felt the abnormality in Inanna's upper back. He glanced down to confirm the point of entry, and looked back at her, assuming she had also figured it out as soon as he touched it. Inanna's request made him frown, "…I don't know."

They both were feeling some violent inclinations towards this creature, but Cato's concerns took precedent, "The more deadly Force powers are usually reserved for the bad guys," and more importantly, "With it so connected to you now, would that not be… I dunno, dangerous? If I tried to kill it some way?"

Inanna Harth​

 

[Inanna Harth]

She winced when his fingers got a little too close to the hole in her back. "It's a fething parasite. Do the Jedi have that many hangups about using the Force to kill that they'd let a parasite continue to live inside someone's body?"

They probably would in this case, she realized. Chernamila were not deadly creatures. They didn't kill their hosts even when they burrowed into them, even if they did cause them a loathsome amount of suffering in the process...

Cato was also concerned about the dangers. Inanna picked up the Star hanging around her neck, looked down at it, then sighed. "I can't do it myself," she muttered, fisting her hands in her hair out of frustration. "My Sense is too weak. I can't even tell when you or Serena are around half the time, so how am I supposed to pick out some kali'eng chernamila inside of me for destruction?!"

Then, realizing that they had no idea where the chernamila had even come from, she suddenly stood up. "We need to get out of here," she said. "There might be more around, and I don't want you to have to go through what I did."

Cato Harth​

 

[Cato Harth]

"It's not just that, Inanna. I don't exactly have a lot of training in stuff like that. Combine that with the fact that it's literally dissolved into your system. I dunno, maybe if-" She handed him the star right after, reaching the same point he was about to make. Something curative that would purge that which wasn't supposed to be there. Still, it wasn't exactly Cato's niche. He was about to speak again, when she abruptly stood up.

"There might be more around, and I don't want you to have to go through what I did."

He shuddered at the thought, "…Okay. Fine. Let's go," Cato stood up as well, suddenly becoming much more paranoid of their surroundings, "Do you… do you need anything else from here?"

Inanna Harth​

 

[Inanna Harth]

“I know, I know…” Inanna buried her face against Cato's chest. “The Star would’ve already closed the wound if it could.”

She spoke softly, seeming to quietly admit a begrudging defeat. There was no getting it out of her. They could catch the moth when it came out on its own and kill it then, but…

Worry about it later, after you've reached somewhere safer. They hadn’t come here to take anything, only to clear out the house and survey the damage. Still, Inanna took a few moments to look around at her old room one last time. Stooping to pick up the little globe of planets that had fallen to the floor, she turned it over in her hands. “I never should have come back here,” she muttered. “They say you can never go home again…”

Setting the sphere on her desk, she took Cato’s hand and led him out of the house.

Cato Harth​