Temrash lurches to a stop. The hefty aroma of bacon that beckoned him to the dining room recedes with the rest of the world.

A boy sits quietly in a chair, aimlessly picking at the food on his plate. There is nothing notable about the child besides the singular label in that he is the host's little brother. Nothing important about him except that he is the only one that exists in the world right now.

The emptiness, the same one Temrash skirted the edges of when he first woke up in a body that felt hollowed out of any presence but his own, lingers at the edges of his memories of Jake. Jake who's still a good foot shorter than Tom, so still needs to be referred to as midget. Who will probably always be referred to as midget. Terrible at basketball, although no one is cruel enough to say it.

Temrash watches as the information on Jake surfaces in fragmented chunks and lingers on the edge of what isn't quite there. There's more on Jake besides those superficial features and the physical traits that Temrash could rattle off if asked. But the yeerk can't quite process what that is.

And then Jake looks up. His brown eyes piercing.

"Oh, morning Tom...why are you staring?"

Temrash starts and then snatches at the first phrase he can think of to cover for the movement. "What? Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of something."

"But why were you staring at me?" Jake pushes.

"Really? I thought I was just staring blankly into empty space. But then again, empty space, your head. What's the difference?" Those words just come out. Familiar and so easy to reach that they must have been said before in the exact same way at a different time and place. Except that the memory of saying those words before has nothing to it but a voice that is slightly higher pitched coming out of a mouth with a marginally different shape.

The memory is recent, so very recent with how clear that voice sounds in Temrash's head, but Tom's voice wasn't any different days ago.

"Tom?" And then the host's mother stands in front of him, staring right into his eyes. Her hand is inches away from his head.

Temrash steps back and bumps right against the door frame as he moves away from her. Standing several feet behind her, Jake is watching in open concern with his food forgotten on the table behind him.

"Tom, we've been trying to get your attention for a few minutes now. Are you okay?' She frowns as if remembering something. "Where did you hit your head again?"

Temrash can still salvage this moment. All he has to do is shove down the panic at losing track of his sense of the outside world.

"It's not that bad. I was up most of the night working on that history report, so I'm just tired." The words come out just a tad too quickly, and Temrash resists the urge to clench his fist at the screw up.

"Tom." This time the concern hardens into a mother's sternness. "Where did you hit your head?"

He gestures to the temple that still hurts and lets out another ignored excuse as the woman reaches over and parts the short hair covering the injury.

It hurts when she prods at it, but Temrash keeps Tom's facial muscles relaxed and tightens his stranglehold over any unwanted tremors that threaten to slip out. For his part, Tom just sleeps right through the experience even though the pain is yet another thing that should have woken him up.

"See, Mom, I'm fine," Leave me alone. "I was just zoning out because I stayed up too late." Get your hands off me so I can think.

The mother finally ceases touching him even if she refuses to step away as she stares at him with equal measures of suspicion and concern.

"If you say so, but if you need to skip out on school today to go to the doct-"

"Mom!" Temrash can't miss out on the mission today. The details burst like sharp shards in his mind as if he could've dared to forgot what has been requested of him by his commander. Visser Three himself ordered his presence on the Blade Ship this afternoon, and to disobey would be beyond foolish.

"I'm fine. I just stayed up way too late, that's it. That's all." Panic is forced down and, in its place, Temrash weaves sincerity into every word. "Just need some breakfast, and I'll be good to go." Tom would never push this hard to go to school. No teenager that Temrash has had the misfortune of encountering would, so maybe this isn't the right approach.

"I mean if you're offering an out of school today, maybe I am dying a bit. Probably a good idea to stay home and to nurse my wounds in front of the soothing TV." He leans against the doorframe, placing his hand on the uninjured side of his head to complete the exaggeration in body gestures that Tom favors.

Jake snorts from behind her as the mother scoffs. So, that move was the right one after all.

"Yeah, you're fine." After smacking him lightly on the shoulder, she finally moves away from Temrash and back to whatever task that she was doing before the incident.

The thing is, even with his newfound space, Temrash doesn't have the privacy to figure out how he disconnected from the outside world so thoroughly that he lost track of time. Because now there is Jake who just stands only a few feet away, looking awkward as he glances from his food and then back to Temrash.

A host without a family would have been far less taxing.

"Well if you're not going to eat..." Temrash pushes past the boy, hitting against his shoulder on his way to the unguarded plate. Predictably, Jake scrambles back over to his chair, plopping back down while glaring at Temrash. Rather than pick at his food like before, the boy digs in in defiance at his brother's "attempted" theft.

Temrash resists the urge to roll his eyes only to remember that Tom would do that anyway before committing to the action. It looks natural, but the millisecond of delay adds yet another sense of wrongness that permeates every second of this day so far.

As if to stomp out the unease, Temrash plops down onto his own chair across from Jake. The boy's glare has softened, so now the two stare at each other while saying nothing. Which is unnatural for two brothers who usually rib on each other.

"So, up to anything today?" Temrash refuses to bicker right now, so hopefully a few basic questions will be enough so that no one notices anything off. He is supposedly half asleep after all.

And then Jake looks startled at the basic question and tears his eyes away from Temrash to stare at his food.

"Yeah." The boy mumbles as the yeerk refuses to let irritation twitch across his face. Whatever problems the human boy is going through can't be that important compared to say, dealing with scraps of memory that have no basis in reality. That being established, Temrash is going to have to deal with some mundane conversation for...seven minutes since the mother just placed his bacon and eggs in front of him and he can scarf that down pretty quick without seeming too out of character.

Temrash digs in. Maybe if he doesn't pry then Jake will remain silent throughout the whole meal.

"I'm, um, trying for your old basketball team today." Jake mumbles while glancing at his brother.

Temrash swallows down a rather large mouthful of food, but the action does nothing to pull down the annoyance that's boiling up from inside. There's a reason why he quit Tom's team. Tossing a ball through a hoop over and over again was a useless waste of his time regardless of the social appeal it seemed to give him among the human classmates. He can be socially appealing volunteering for the Sharing and not waste hours of his day in the process.

But no, just when he's escaped basketball, Jake has decided to toss it back into his life.

"Cool." Temrash takes another large bite out of his meal so that he doesn't have to add anything else to the one word he managed to say in a positive tone. There's a third of his meal left, so he might be able to escape this conversation without having to give actual encouragement.

"Yeah." Jake stares at Temrash as if...he's eating too quickly.

Damn it.

"I'm sure you'll do great. I mean, you're related to me after all and I'm pretty awesome out there." Was awesome out there. A hork bajir would have to drag him back on to the court now.

Jake practically glows at the encouragement but the taped on self-arrogance at the end has the boy half-heartedly scowling at his brother. Just as intended, Jake's attention is drawn away by the speed of Temrash's eating.

Temrash grins at him, swiping up the last bite of his food before rising up from the table and extracting himself from the conversation.

"Gotta go, see you later, midget." The yeerk doesn't even have to fake the positive tone as he leaves the human boy behind.