This morning, it's day number 3,894 of wishing I could die.
But I can't.
"I" wake up at six o'clock AM sharp, and "I" get out of bed and shower and put on the ugly red and gold uniform that designates "me" as a member of Visser One's elite forces.
But it's not really me.
The slug inside my head laughs at me because I still can't think of the Andalite-Controller as anyone but Visser Three. It keeps laughing as it reminds me that there are now seven existing Andalite-Controllers, and one of them is on the Council of Thirteen. And that that, of course, isn't counting me.
Or all of my friends.
"I" eat the most disgusting food known to man, made more disgusting by the fact that "I" eat it every day. But Dettal Eight-Nine-One doesn't care about a pleasurable taste in my mouth. It cares about nutrients and strength, keeping "me" in top condition.
As Sub-Visser Twelve.
"I" catch the tube-train to the main building "downtown" where Visser Thr--One's, forces usually meet to discuss strategies. The Civil War means that "we've" put the remaining skirmishes with the Andalites and the free Hork-Bajir on hold, Visser One's determination to quash Visser Four's uprising reaching top priority.
Visser Four couldn't have picked a better host than my cousin.
On the train, I sulk in my own, small corner of my mind. It's like I'm sitting in a tiny, impenetrable glass bubble: I can't escape it, the walls are practically closing in on me, and everything I do and think is visible to the naked eye.
Or at least to Dettal.
But in my tiny corner I cling to the one thing that's kept me from breaking for 3,894 days of my life: the memories of my friends. Blond hair whirling through gray sludge, fighting them to the very end. A tail blade pressed against its owner's own throat, the last image I'd ever seen of him. A blur of red-brown feathers, reminding me that Tobias still lived free.
Cassie.
Marco.
Dettal laughs at me even now for that, as well. His mocking mental voice criticizing my "deviant" lifestyle, denouncing my ability to feel what I do feel, while at the same time knowing, knowing how real those emotions were. Knowing just as well as I did.
But why would I wish to participate in a lifestyle that would never produce more offspring, more host bodies?
It's something that an asexual Yeerk could never understand. "He" likes to replay my memories of Cassie, splashing them up on the video screen that displayed on the back of my skull, making me relive every time I hugged her, every time I kissed her, our horrible, horrible first time making love that had made me realize exactly what was going wrong.
It's less exquisite torture than when he plays the scenes of Marco.
"I" get off the train and started striding briskly toward the building's entrance. I had never done that before - stride briskly. I walked. Like, an average guy, walk. But it was so ingrained in me now, I had a feeling I'd walk like that even if I were to achieve freedom on day 3,895.
It's funny - no, actually, not funny at all - how I think of Dettal as "I" now.
Today's meeting had been scheduled far in advance. It was a planned meetup with the special forces of Visser Five, in an effort to see if "she" would be willing to ally with "us" rather than Visser Four and the rebels. Visser Five was a lesser twin; her primary twin was on the Council. "We" were hoping that this would give "us" an edge in dealing with the rebellion. It was the same kind of mundane Yeerk work I was forced to listen to every day, no control over my own ears, no way to block out the sound in my own head.
But today is, all of the sudden, not an ordinary day.
Milling around the building's ground floor are Visser One's forces and Visser Five's forces alike, distinguishable by uniform color. I mentally remark that the red, green and gold make us look like Christmas; Dettal snaps back that no one has celebrated Christmas in six years. Visser Five's top people are queued up waiting for an elevator, with the gutwrenching form of Toby Hamee - Visser Five's host body - standing tall and proud in the middle, surrounded by guards.
One of whom I recognize.
His hair is cropped military-short, free of all frivolity, but in my head it's down to his shoulders, dark and waving, in a way a lot of the girls at school thought was the attractive kind of rebellious. His face is set firm and expressionless, but my mind paints it with twinkling eyes and a mischievous sneer. His hands are clenched to fists at his sides, but my heart sees them splayed out with red nail polish on each fingernail, when he'd done himself up as a woman one Halloween with things borrowed from Rachel, and when, around a mouthful of candy corn, I'd kissed him for the very first time.
Dettal spits nastily, "Oh, it's Marco."
He takes notice of me a moment later. I can see the conflict on his face: his Yeerk dealing with the same feelings that Dettal was having to tolerate from me. I knew I wore the same expression. He's a mere ten feet from me across the utilitarian cement floor, waiting in line just behind Tob--Visser Five for the next elevator over. His fists curl and uncurl.
I fight.
I cannot remember ever struggling with Dettal this much beyond day 623 - the day I knew all four of us had been taken, and that I knew in my gut we'd never make it back to normal. Day 1057, when Marco had first been transferred away from Visser One's forces, had been bad enough, but this, where I could reach out and touch him...I fight hard. Dettal growls and threatens in my brain, but there is little that can rein control over what I'm feeling now.
Love; it had worked on the Howlers, and it would work again.
Because, you see, I know he's doing it too. I can see, pointing my own eyes his direction, his neck twitching his head to the left a little, a repeated motion that can only be him struggling just as I am. His hands clench and unclench even more rapidly now, and in the same frantic fashion my knees rock forward like I'm trying to walk to him.
And then suddenly I am walking to him.
I'd almost forgotten how to will my mind to move my own body, and it's made even harder by the presence of Dettal looming against me, trying to shrink my bubble back down to its usual size as it threatens to consume my entire mind and force him right back out. Marco is walking jerkily toward me too, trying to reach out his arms for my waist like I am for his shoulders. I'm still taller than he is.
"J...ake..." his throat croaks out, and I hate myself for not being strong enough to speak his name.
I can hear the other Controllers reacting now, startled out of their military routine by the two of us breaking pattern and violating our parasite control. His uniform feels alien under my fingers and so I reach up to his face, to cup the sweet familiar skin of his cheeks and to feel tears that neither of us had cried for 3,894 days.
For him, it may have been a little longer.
And finally, we've reached our limit; I can't move any closer with my feet and neither can he. The most I can do - and oh God, it's so much - is to kiss him, jerkily, like doing it for the first time, but with his lips under mine so that I can trace their pattern, can make them into a witty smirk in my mind and on my tongue. He tries so hard to kiss back, but I almost prefer him wasting his energy to say my name instead. It's been so long since I've heard it.
My name isn't Jake any more.
By the time the Dracon in Visser Five's hand is leveled at my temple, Dettal is back in control again and my bubble is so small that I can hardly breathe. "No problem, Visser, just lost control of my host," he says with my lips, replacing with these words the only good thing I have on them had in so many years. "He became very...emotional. I have regained control."
"You'd better have," Toby Hamee's mouth says. "You could be killed for that."
But for the first time in so long, I don't actually want to die. Cherishing this one moment, placing it inside my bubble of protection, I think I could live another 3,894 days.