Jeff look across the lake at the afternoon sun, shading her eyes with one hand. It was funny how even from this high up, the Sun didn't seem any different. She guessed it was because no matter how much bigger she might be than normal people now, in the grand scheme of things she wasn't really that big. Not compared to the world around her. She wondered if she really would grow up, some day; if it was true that she became this, and stayed this, because she didn't want to be the Jeff that her father - her old father - wanted her to be, didn't want to grow up into him the way he wanted, then maybe she really wouldn't...but would it really be good for her to...to stay like this forever, if that was what was going to happen? She didn't know...
Jeff was distracted from these thoughts by the sound of someone coming down the path around the lake house. She'd heard a car pull into the driveway a minute ago, but she hadn't thought much of it; her mom was out getting groceries, so it was probably her. She turned to see; to her surprise, it wasn't her mom, but Ricky and Anne - and Belle with them, perched on Anne's shoulder. She gasped, a soft metallic sound that swished through the vast space of her body cavity.
"Y-you...you didn't change, either?" she said, rushing towards them. Then she frowned. "B-but...but I thought...you were afraid of me...?"
Ricky blinked. No, she hadn't changed back...it was a surprise to her, to think that...that she really was going to spend the rest of her life as this, that she would always need someone there to wind her, but...well, after several months of this, she'd found that it'd brought her closer to her parents, and left her with no real option to chicken out of developing her friendship with Anne, who was always there for her at school. And...well, she'd really been...kind of getting used to this. It no longer seemed strange to hear the ticking and whirring of her mechanisms when she stopped and listened, or the gentle metallic brushing sound of her voicebox, or to feel her key slowly rotating as her mainspring gradually wound down. Even her dreams, now that she was settling into this form, had become less unsettling and centered around her new existence and more just typically dream-strange. Weird as it seemed...she guessed she really didn't mind staying this way. (It wasn't like she'd made much of her old life to begin with, anyway...)
But...afraid of Jeff? Afraid of him when he was Razor, sure - afraid and resentful and counterintuitively, none-too-secretly craving his approval, like so many kids her age. But now? She wasn't the same person as Razor...not any more than Ricky was the same person she'd been all those weeks ago. "...who told you that?" she asked.
Jeff frowned. "My, uh...my dad..." she said, realizing that back before her dad had undergone his own experience with being changed, he wasn't the kind of person who was above stretching the truth for his own ends. "And...and when you didn't come to see me anymore..."
"We didn't come see you because you didn't tell us where you'd gone!" Anne said. "And when we did find out...the bus doesn't run out here, so Ricky and Belle couldn't come, and my parents couldn't drive me in the daytime. We weren't afraid of you!"
Jeff bit her lip, feeling her gears turning a little faster. She hadn't told them where she'd moved to because she'd thought they were scared of her, but if that wasn't true... "Th-then...then you do...want to be my friends?" she asked.
Anne smiled. "Of course we do," she said. "Right, Ricky?"
Ricky hesitated for a moment. She still remembered what it'd been like to...to be under Jeff's sway, first as a human boy, and then more directly as a clockwork girl. But...Jeff wasn't that person anymore...just like Ricky was...was no longer the mute, lecherous creep in the audience in her nightmare. Things were different now; they'd both changed. And this Jeff...she seemed sweet and pleasant and a bit lonely...she needed a friend. "R-right," she said, putting on a smile.
Jeff beamed, and picked Ricky up in a hug without warning. The smaller clockwork girl squirmed for a moment, but relented and allowed herself to be held by the little giantess, feeling embarassingly like a doll. (At the very least, Jeff had the sense to give her key room to turn...)
While this was going on, another car pulled up in the driveway. "Oh, mom's home!" Jeff said happily, walking over to meet her mother. "Mom!" she said. "Ricky an' Belle an' Anne came to see me, and...and they do want to be friends with me!"
Her mother smiled. The last few months had been a mixed blessing for her - no matter how much adjusting she'd had to do when she suddenly had to start paying attention to finances again, it was freeing to not have to be Mrs. Geoffrey Aurelius anymore, not have to put on that face for her husband's old circle. At the time it'd been a load off just to not have to deal with him, and even now that...now that he'd undergone such a one-eighty, now that she was finding she kind of did miss him, she still couldn't imagine going back to their life the way it had been. She was even thinking of starting to paint again; there was a spare room in the loft that could make for a good studio. But she'd been worrying about Jeff - as good as it was that she had enough room to move, and a quiet spot away from the crowds to get used to her new shape and size in, it couldn't be good for her to be so alone all the time. This was definitely a good sign as far as she was concerned. "That's wonderful, sweetie," she said, smiling.
Jeff nodded, but suddenly frowned. "Oh, m...mommy," she said, "I'm...I'm starting to run down..." She'd learned to recognize the tell-tale feeling, just as Ricky and Belle had over the last few months. It was still a hassle, but knowing it was coming enabled them to be ready for it, rather than just running down in the middle of something. She knelt down and placed Ricky on the ground; she could probably hold her in place just fine, but it wouldn't be all that great for Ricky to be stuck up in the air the whole time Jeff was getting re-wound...
Her mother sighed. "Alright, honey, I'll go get the ladder." It was such a clumsy approach, but her daughter was just so big...she could only reach the bottom loop of her winding key from the ground.
"Wait," Anne said. "Jeff, kneel down again."
Jeff did, not sure what Anne had in mind, but not really hesitating. Anne nodded. "Bend forward...a little more - perfect." She walked over to the giant clockwork-girl, whose back was now much closer to the ground. "C'mon!" she said to Mrs. Aurelius. "It should be easier this way."
Jeff's mother nodded, and the two of them took either side of the key and started to turn it, reaching across Jeff's back and trading off the loops between themselves. Jeff couldn't help but marvel - it'd been so clumsy for her mother to try to wind her from the ladder, and it hadn't felt very good, but this...this felt like how it should feel, to her. It was a nice feeling, like being held by someone who cared for you...
"Thank you," Mrs. Aurelius said, when they were done. "I wish I'd thought of that weeks ago...doing that, I can probably even manage by myself."
Anne smiled. "Any time."
Muriel softly opened the door into Melanie's room. "Melanie, honey?" she called quietly. "I wanted to talk with you about this..."
There was no response. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her, spotting the insect-girl huddled up on the bed. Muriel knelt next to the bed and put her arm around her. Melanie bristled for a moment, but relaxed and pressed against her. "She killed them," she whispered. Muriel had heard anguish from Melanie when she had first been separated from the Enemy, but this was the first time she'd heard real sorrow in the insect-girl's voice. She sighed. I wish I had any idea what to do in this situation... she thought. She gently ran a hand through Melanie's hair, like she remembered her mother doing when she'd get upset. On a whim, she gently rubbed around the base of her antennae. Melanie seemed to find that comforting, but she was obviously still upset.
"She says they saved everyone that would allow it," Muriel said quietly. "And that it wasn't the Numbers who...who put an end to the rest."
Melanie thought that over for a minute. "But they helped it happen," she said. "The defenses wouldn't have been low enough if not for them..."
Muriel sighed. "They did what they had to do, Melanie," she said. "A lot of people would've been hurt or killed if they hadn't stopped the Enemy. Probably the entire world; they didn't spare you, why would they have spared people who weren't even part of them? Should all those people have suffered just so that the Enemy could have their way?"
Melanie bit her lip. She couldn't help but remember how betrayed, how rug-pulled, how empty, how utterly alone she'd felt in that moment, when her existence as one/one of a multitude of indistinct entity/entities was cut off and she was left to...left to die by what she'd considered herself as an extension of. She remembered the terror of death that had overtaken her, just as the thrill of sensation had overtaken her and gradually synced her thoughts to humanoid patterns in a humanoid brain in a humanoid body; the terror of death that had left her at the last incapable of wanting to carry out her assigned task, because it would mean her own annihilation...
She wished she couldn't remember these things, but she could; and she could imagine other people - Muriel, Grandmother and Grandfather, even Jenny whom she was so angry at - overtaken by that same horrible terror before they were...before they were unmade by the Enemy's final victory over definition. Somehow the thought of it happening to them was even worse; was this what was called empathy? Why should what happened to others have to hurt her!? And it wasn't even real harm, it hadn't happened...
...because...Jenny had stopped it. Stopped them...if she hadn't...
She felt her stomach churn as a flood of conflicting emotion washed over her, and she started to cry; Muriel picked her up and wrapped her in her arms, the one soft flesh and the other tough chitin. If Jenny hadn't stopped the Enemy, then everyone would probably have...have died. But if Jenny hadn't stopped the Enemy, then they would still exist; there would be others in the universe like what she used to be, and she wouldn't be so alone...but even if they still existed, they wouldn't take her back...but in a certain way that didn't matter, they were still gone now...
"Why does it have to be this way?" she sobbed. "It's not fair!"
Muriel nodded, hugging her tightly. "It's not," she said. "I'm sorry...even if it had to happen, I'm sorry it hurts for you, honey. I'm sorry you got caught in the middle of this mess..."
They sat there for a while, Melanie crying it out while Muriel just held her. Finally, when she was more or less done for the time being, Muriel looked her in the eye. "Melanie," she asked, "why did you just lash out at Jenny like that today? The battle was months ago."
Melanie sniffed, blinking the tears away and wiping her face on Muriel's sleeve. "The last of us...is no longer Us," she said. "It happened today...all that now survive of us have become something else."
Muriel blinked in surprise. "There was one left?" she asked. "And...I thought you weren't 'us' either, anymore..."
Melanie nodded. "I...I am not," she said. In body, she knew, she was Muriel and she was Jenny, and inside she was...neither... "But I could feel Us," she continued. "This...it had left the Enemy, but it was still Us...somewhere very far away. And now it has changed, too, and I...I am...alone..."
Muriel hugged her close. "You're not alone," she said. "We're here for you, Melanie. Never forget that."
Melanie pressed tightly into the woman's- into her mother's chest. This life was so hard, so confusing, and she had so little grounding with which to function in it...but as much as things might not make sense to her, she couldn't help but feel that Muriel was right; in this place, with these people, she wasn't really alone...
It had been quite a couple of months for Andy. So many things that she'd forgotten about from Sue's pregnancies - the way her breasts had started to grow, the darkening of some parts of her, like nipples and nether lips - and of course plenty of things she remembered perfectly well, like the nausea and having to pee all the damn time. The whole experience was fascinatingly strange, more than a little scary, and heart-melting in a way she'd never anticipated. There was just something about carrying a child inside her...or, as it had turned out, two children. That had been quite the surprise...
There was also the fact that she seemed to be progressing faster than normal, which the doctors were putting down to her being a rabbit-changed. There was, as she understood, a limit to this sort of thing - any organism of human complexity at human size was going to require a significant gestation period, and the difference looked like it would be a matter of maybe a month, not even outside the range for human women - but there it was. That was alright with her; as amazing of an experience as this was, the kids weren't getting any lighter. She seemed to be somewhere in the start of the second trimester already - she'd actually felt them kick a couple times this week.
At Sue's insistence, they'd signed up for a class; after all, while they'd been through this drill twice before, this was their first time in these switched roles, and despite Andy's skepticism it was enlightening. It was helpful to be around some first-timers, too - it gave Andy people who knew what she was going through, and Sue was helpful in providing some insight for them. The standouts in Andy's mind were a young skunk-woman named Erica, who had been certain her child was a girl from day one, for reasons she didn't explain, and had turned out to be right, and a teenage doe-girl who was clearly there under duress, judging by the way her mother was present every single time, but who couldn't quite hide some level of anticipation on her part. She wondered what their stories were, but both were a bit reticent, and she hadn't pressed the issue. She hadn't seen Abby, the woman she'd met at the doctor's office, in some time. Andy wondered how she was doing; she must be due pretty much any day now.
Andy was idly eating a rather esoteric lunch (peanut butter, anchovies, and pineapple, which she'd made into a makeshift dipping tray and was munching with sour-cream-and-onion potato chips) in the shade of the living room when she saw the news about the Sun. She immediately ran and hid in the bathroom, where Sue found her a few minutes later.
"Andy, honey," he said, "it's okay. It'll be okay. C'mon, come with me."
The bunny-girl bit her lip. The Sun was changing people back...not everyone, granted, but...the idea of going back, back to the body that was cripplingly dependent on alcohol, back to the belligerence and the jackassery and the failing marriage, and after all these months of...of this, this freedom... "I..I c-c-can't!" she stammered, trying not to start crying.
Sue put his arms around her. "Honey, it's okay," he said. "Lots of people aren't changing back. We're going to have to go out sometime. Even if we don't, the Sun will get us eventually, the way it got us the first time. It might as well be now."
She looked up at him. "But...but what about the babies?" she asked.
"I think that's all the more reason not to worry," he said. "With all the people changed in the last six months, have any of them been hurt or killed by it? I don't think that it does that. The babies will be fine..and so will you, honey." He smiled at her. "Trust me."
She...she did trust him, really. It was just...that nagging what-if...but Sue was right, they hadn't managed to avoid the Sun for even a full three months, there was no way they'd be able to do it for the rest of their lives. She marveled; she would never have guessed, all those weeks ago, that she'd ever be praying not to change back, yet here they were... Andy got up, shakily, and followed him to the entryway, where he opened the door and they stepped out of the shade into the familiar yellow sunlight.
She closed her eyes and waited for a long minute. Nothing happened. She turned to look at Sue, who was still a naga-man. Andy breathed an enormous sigh of relief and collapsed into his arms. This was it, then - she was always going to be a rabbit-woman, but...that was okay. She was free, she still had Sue and the kids, and two more on the way, and...and anyway, she really did kind of like this...
She heard someone coming and turned to look. It was Alex, still a dragon-girl. "M-Dad?" she asked. "Is it...is this...?"
Andy nodded. "This is how it's going to be," she said, putting an arm around her son-turned-daughter. "It'll be okay, kiddo. We're all in it together."
