A/N - Although I usually shun the present tense like a plague, I used it here for a sense of immediacy - I don't know if just seemed to work. Anyway, I've always wondered what happened on the Anati world which doomed Visser One to being executed on Earth. Here is my suggestion :) Please review if you like (and even if you don't...)
Disclaimer - Animorphs belong to K.A. Applegate
14 Nights
The Anati system. Visser One is in a bar, drinking white wine. The bar was her idea, a piece of Earth for all those human controllers with homesick hosts, and she's out on its metal terrace, underneath a dozen gleaming moons. The sky is littered with stars, and a warm breeze rises off the ground around her. It is baked and rugged, like a moonscape. She worries that this evening ritual is becoming a weakness, wonders if the Council of Thirteen would find her drinking of a few glasses (never more than three) reprehensible, an excuse to shelve her. She fears the death sentence hanging suspended over her head, so she works, harder than she ever has before, here on the Anati system. She's arming the moons, building Dracon cannon to greet any Andalites who visit with a brief and fiery welcome.
Such long days take their toll, and she wants that wine, transported from Earth at her command, wants it to soothe her, to help her sleep. As it slides down her throat in icy mouthfuls she feels its chill caressing her oesophagus before hitting her empty stomach, and then the lovely warmth that spreads.
You're turning into a regular alcoholic, Eva sneers. The mighty Visser One, directing the enslavement of the Anati from the bottom of a bottle.
A human controller approaches and her eyes flash in annoyance as she feigns to ignore him. Does he not know who she is? He takes the empty seat at the table beside her and her anger deepens. He is ruining her moment of solitude, her respite. She could have him shot, arrested, tortured or starved and yet he presumes to sit beside her.
He smiles at her as if they're sharing a secret, and extends his hand to chink his beer bottle with her glass.
"Beautiful isn't it?" he says, gesturing at the stars. Visser One stiffens, and he turns to face her when she doesn't reply. "I'm sorry, have I disturbed you?" She says nothing, just ignores him and drinks. Or she thinks she ignores him, but instead she registers that his host is in its mid thirties, and good looking by human standards. Dark hair, a symmetric face, some definition of the muscles on his bare arms below his short sleeves. The eyes are surprisingly warm for a controller's, great big brown ones.
Like a spaniel, Eva supplied. She shivers inside her mind. And underneath, one of you lurking. Visser One doesn't reply to her host. She rarely does these days, because she is sick of this human woman. Sick of her but stuck with her, for as long as she wishes to wield power over the 'Andalite bandits' on Earth. Still, out here in the warm Anati night, with its smell of dust and wind and some exotic scent, some flower perfume brought by the breeze, she wants to be rid of Eva.
The controller beside her shifts and she suddenly asks, "What's your name?"
He smiles. "Callari seven-three-nine."
"I'll remember it," she promises. He looks pleased, not recognising a threat when he hears one.
The next night she sighs in exasperation. He has arrived earlier and is there again, sitting beside her usual spot. In front of him is a beer in a bottle, and a glass of wine. She considers sitting somewhere else, but what Yeerk Visser would allow themselves to be forced to move? Instead she sits beside him and takes the wine. She drinks it grumpily, waiting for him to speak so that she can snap at him, tell him who she is and see him cower. He says nothing but drinks his beer and then heaves a sigh and leaves. It is not a sad sigh, but a satisfied one, as if sinking into a warm bath.
Two more nights pass and he never speaks. He passes her the wine and does not look at her but drinks, looking out into the night. Visser One does the same, and they ignore each other together.
On the fifth night she says, "You are not Callari seven-three-nine." He turns languidly, as if he has only just noticed she is there, despite having slid the wine glass in front of her five minutes before. She takes a sip under his gaze and says, "I found your file. You have a job here as an engineer, working on the cannons. But there is nothing before that. No previous record of you anywhere in the Yeerk Empire. You did not exist, you had no parents, no siblings."
He sips his beer and says consideringly, "It's a big empire."
"I could have you seized," she says conversationally, her eyes on the landscape as if discussing the view. "We'll find out who you are." He laughs.
"You haven't even told me who you are." Incredulity seizes her, and surprise. Is it possible he really does not know who she is?
"I am someone you should know better than to talk to that way," she replies. He runs his eyes over her frankly, as if undressing her host. An involuntary flush burns on her human host's cheeks, and she can't stop it. She angrily turns to hide it.
"A Sub Visser perhaps," he says teasingly. "One who worked industriously to track me down. You clearly have something to prove and Vissers don't generally have that sort of time free." She opens her mouth to answer but is unable to. How can she explain, how indeed can she justify the hours she spent searching for records of him? It is not something a Visser would normally do. The controller smiles again. "Don't get over excited, Sub Visser. I am working directly with Visser One, and so my details are not for the eyes of the likes of you."
Her mouth actually falls open, and she wants to laugh in his face, laugh and call over her guards and see his shock at being caught in the lie. Instead she says, "Really? How exciting. So, what is your real name then?"
He finishes his beer and puts the glass down with a clang. "Need to know I'm afraid." He stands, turns, smiles. "I'm glad you started talking."
The next night he is not there and she thinks she has frightened him off, or he has discovered the truth of who she is. The terrace is half full, but seems empty.
Not disappointed are we? Eva teases.
He is there the following night, the seventh night, with two glasses of wine, as if bringing forward the one from the night before. She takes the first, sits, and sips. He says nothing but whilst she looks at the stark Anati landscape, admiring the craters and crevices, he looks at her. She is aware of his eyes but says nothing, just finishes the first glass and starts on the second. He finishes his beer and leans his right elbow on the table, his chin in the palm of his hand.
On a whim she says, "How was Visser One today?"
"Demanding," he replies, and says nothing else whilst confusion roils inside her.
She arrives deliberately early on the eighth night, and sits somewhere new, out on the terrace in the corner. He walks out of the doors into the Anati night, his pale human face caught in the moonlight. He doesn't show any surprise at the empty seats, nor any sign that he has noticed her sitting in the corner watching him. He places down the white wine and the beer, and drinks the beer slowly, eyes on the bleak landscape lit up beyond the edge of the terrace. When he has finished he looks at the wine glass beside him and then stands up and walks away, leaving it standing there, its contents gleaming in the moonlight like some precious liquid. Visser One fights the urge to walk over and drink it.
She is back in her usual place the following evening, and again he walks out and sits next to her. She doesn't even bother to get her own drink now, he just passes her one. His silence is relaxing she realises, almost soporific alongside the wine. She can feel the tension leaving her host's muscles as she drinks and watches a convoy bouncing on tank treads down the dirt track the Yeerks have cut into the landscape in front of her. The moons make the night so bright that work can continue as normal, and the night shift are now busy, working as their Visser drinks. She heaves a deep sigh, and the controller turns his head to her again.
"Long day?" She nods, then smiles and says wickedly, "How was Visser One today?"
"Tired, I think," he replies. He turns away again, as if he has not noticed the tiny triumphant smile that flashed across her face. He does know who she is after all, and he has been lying deliberately to her this whole time. Surprisingly she is not angry but amused, at his nerve, at his calm assurance.
The following night she holds out her hand against the wine glass when it is passed to her, halting its passage.
"Tell me your name, or I won't accept this." He hesitates, then drops his hand from the glass.
"Is it so important?"
"You made it important when you withheld it." His face is unreadable.
"I never asked for yours."
"You didn't need to. Everyone knows who I am."
"If I tell you my name, I fear you would not like me."
"Irrelevant. You are presumptuous if you think I like you now." He smiles then, the amusement in his eyes breaking through and sending more warmth into Visser One than the wine ever had.
"What an opponent you are! I have a new respect for Visser Three for taking you to trial." Visser One rocks slightly, as if he has struck her, totally blindsided by his comment. She reaches out and grabs his wrist, holding tightly, finger nails digging into the soft flesh.
"Tell me your name now or I will never sit with you again." It is a strange angry thing to say, and the words are not what she intended to utter at all. She meant to say 'Or I will have my guards seize you. I will torture you." instead she feels foolish, but can not take the words back.
The controller frowns, then says softly, "You really want to know that much?" She nods, white lipped, and releases his arm as if ashamed of her lack of control. He reaches down and lifts the beer to his lips, the marks of her grip stark on his wrist. Then he replaces the beer and turns to her. She's suddenly aware that his hand drops below the table and rests lightly on her knee. She can just feel its touch through her skirt, feels it sending little jolts of sensitivity up her leg.
Feeling all right? Eva asks unkindly. The truth is Visser One is not, her host's breath is quick, her skin feels feverish in the warm breeze. She can't control the rapid heartbeat of her host. The controller's large brown eyes have something unreadable in them, perhaps sadness?
"You should call me Prince," he says quietly. And then he releases her, stands and walks away too fast for her to say anything. She couldn't anyway, she is too shocked, and the blood is hammering in her host's ears.
Yet he is there the next night, sitting calmly with the beer and the wine. It is as if she has dreamed the events of the tenth night, and here she is on the eleventh, and it is normal again. He slides the wine in front of her and she drinks it slowly, eyes on the landscape. Her eyes are up, and the wine is in her left hand, and her right slides under the table and onto his knee, and then up his leg. Prince continues to drink his beer, but his breath is noticeably irregular. Eventually he lowers the finished bottle and asks softly, "What are you doing?"
"Me?" Visser One asks. She smiles and removes her hand, an old illicit thrill racing through her again. She recognises this feeling, remembers it well from her time with Allison Kim, and it is seductive, addictive. "I wasn't doing anything."
On the twelfth night she runs her hand higher as they stare out at the bleak landscape, as a platoon of taxxons working frantically over a crashed Bug Fighter, salvaging pieces that could be reused. It is like a private show put on for their entertainment, watching the giant creatures slither and scuttle with exaggerated carefulness over the crumpled metal mess, wary of sharp edges puncturing their soft bloated sides. With her hand Visser One confirms that she is not alone in being in a heightened state of excitement.
The following evening it is Prince's hand which slides under the table, slyly running up her leg as she drinks her wine and admires the scenery in front of her. She could have drawn it from memory now, could tell you where every crater ran, could have traced the ugly line of the dirt track blindfolded, but still she stares at it as if it is the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. Eva is unusually silent, or perhaps Visser One is just too far away to care.
She spends the thirteenth night watching him for once, and he assumes her studied role of admiring the landscape, sipping his drink as if he had not a care in the world. His human body is certainly desirable, but so too is his stillness, his self-possession, his calm self assurance... Visser One does not take her eyes off him as she watches him and reaches a decision.
On the fourteenth night Visser One orders that the bar be closed for cleaning, but leaves instructions that anyone who disobeys her orders and demands drinks anyway be served. When he comes out onto the terrace under the twelve moons, with a beer and a wine, she feels a strange quiver, as if reckless fate has briefly embraced her. She holds out hand to halt the progress of the wine glass as it is slid in front of her, and says, "I'm not thirsty tonight." He looks around at their setting as if surprised to see it, then turns to face her again.
"Then why come to a bar?"
"I wanted something else." His eyes meet hers, warm, brown, soft.
"I am not sure that this is wise," he says quietly. She reaches out a hand and touches his arm, as if she could somehow take on some of his stillness, his calmness. The moonlight glows in the wineglass between them, like a golden green lantern.
"It is not," she replies. "But neither are you." His eyes arre deep, so deep, and his breath is slow, measured. Under her touch he might have be a statue, sitting unmoving. Then he moves, slowly, beautifully. His hand reaches up and curls into her hair, its touch soft at the base of her head, sending tingles through her host's scalp. She smiles, happily, recklessly, madly, and lifts her hand from his arm to his face. She leans forward and he can feel the smile on her lips when she kisses him, can feel their curve.
Callari seven-three-nine smiles too. He is aroused by this creature, by the very closeness of Visser One, but he is thinking also of his master. He smiles as he kisses her, and imagines Visser Three's answering laugh.