#seriously tho 'guy goes into coma; guy regains consciousness for no discernable reason; guy seems fine until suddenly runs off'

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

In Eleutherophobia-verse, what does Saddler’s family know about what actually happened to him?

So on paper, what happens during #21 - 22 is:

Saddler gets traumatic brain injury (TBI)

Doctors tell Saddler's family he's probably not going to make it; everyone says their goodbyes

There's an incident in an elevator? No one at the hospital seems to have good answers about this

Saddler wakes up, conscious and coordinated, albeit with no memory and some personality changes

Doctors go "this is not even the weirdest thing that's ever happened with a TBI" and send Saddler home

Saddler disappears from his room that night, is never seen again

Everyone else is operating with slightly different amounts of information. So I think that it really does depend on which family member we're talking about.

Jake and Rachel: Know that the "Saddler" who recovered then ran off was actually David, and that Saddler's dead while David's gone. However, don't know what actually happened to Saddler's body (eaten by lion? dropped down elevator shaft? slipped into morgue as John Doe?) and don't really have the means to find out.

Jean, Steve, Dan, Naomi: Have enough distance from the whole mess that they've talked and arrived at the not-unreasonable conclusion Saddler's "recovery" was temporary and that he died shortly after disappearing. They figure he had a burst of consciousness that concealed an ongoing brain bleed, but became disoriented that night and wandered into a river or road that got him killed. Given how weird TBIs are, Steve (an M.D.) might conclude this is 100% possible.

George and Ellen: Probably clinging to the possibility that their son is still alive out there somewhere. Since they know Saddler well enough to have noticed just how out-of-character his behavior was after he "regained consciousness", they're justified in assuming that he really might be wandering around somewhere with amnesia and unable to find his way back.

Brooke and Forrest: Were younger when all this went down, and so have more of an impression that everyone else thinks their brother's still alive.

Justin: Suspects that the yeerks infested Saddler for some reason, and that the Saddler who "woke up" was a yeerk who made temporary use of Saddler's body. Doesn't have any answers — he tried asking Tom about it and came up empty — but can't rule it out.

Tom: Knew the instant Saddler "woke up" that some type of alien bullshit was going down. To this day doesn't know what said bullshit was, since Essa 412 didn't know anything either. Deep down, Tom suspects that Jake and Rachel made Saddler an Animorph to save his life, only to have Saddler get killed on his first mission. But Tom does not want to know that. Given Jake's one indirect allusion to Rachel having killed a failed seventh Animorph, Tom does NOT want to know that.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #saddler berenson #tom berenson #david animorphs #jake berenson #rachel berenson #seriously tho 'guy goes into coma; guy regains consciousness for no discernable reason; guy seems fine until suddenly runs off' #is not actually THAT weird on the scale of weird-ass things that've been observed after a TBI #brains are weird and we don't actually know that much about how they work #anyone who says differently is selling something