I felt that Visser One's death was a little...flat. Getting stepped on is so anticlimactic for such a dynamic character. Enjoy.
Sweet Charade
I am starving to death.
The pain of Kandrona starvation is unimaginable, and coupled with the physical abuse my human host body has endured, is more than enough to drive any sentient creature insane.
I am past my breaking point. If Eva is laughing at me, I can't hear her over the sound of my screaming. The noise is being ripped almost involuntarily from my—from Eva's—throat by the burning, empty, torturous stabs of starvation lancing through my consciousness.
It hurts. It hurts so much. There is nothing left of my body but pain. I can't think. I can barely remember who I am or what I did to deserve such anguish.
[You're finished, Visser One.] Eva's triumphant voice, momentarily cutting through the agony clouding my senses. [You're going to die and I'm going to be free of you. I've dreamt of this moment. I've held it in my heart—]
"Our heart! Yours and mine and all together; you will never be rid of me." I don't understand the words that are spilling from my bleeding lips. I'm raging so violently against the ropes to which I'm secured that my hands and wrists and waist are raw. I can't help it. They're keeping me pinioned to the metal stake on the platform, so close—so close!—to the Kandrona pool that I can practically feel it soaking into my body.
But it's not. And that makes my pain even worse.
"I created this! Call me traitor, will you, when I am the reason you are here?" I throw my head back and scream, a long, shrill note, which nearly causes me to choke. "Kill it! Kill it kill it kill it kill it!"
I'm talking about myself, now. In my own mind, I'm merely a creature that needs to be destroyed. No longer Edriss Five-Six-Two. No longer Visser One, the champion of the Yeerk infestation of Earth, until that absolute idiot Visser Three took over my position and ruined my work.
[You deserved it,] says Eva smugly. I don't even have the strength to quiet her. My chin drops to my chest. My body is shaking visibly now, the blood shivering down my arms and thighs. Small noises wheeze in and out of my mouth. "Aaaaah. Aaaaah. Aaaaah."
Another pang of starvation. I flail and jerk against the chains and ropes that wrap inexorably around me. "We were the first, Essam and I" I moan, repeating words I had already spoken. "The first, damn you, and we died for it. We died every day!"
[Mom!]
An all-too familiar voice calls out to me in thought-speak. Blinking through the blood on my eyelids, I scan the crowd of Controllers jeering at me, come to watch the spectacle of Visser One's execution. I know this voice. Eva does too.
[Marco!] she cries out desperately. Her reaction is enough to silence me and she actually manages to turn my eyes—her eyes, our eyes—in another direction, searching for her son. My starving wrath reaches a new peak. I slam down on her senses and begin beating the back of my head against the pole I'm pinioned to.
"Mother, mother, mother." There is salt water in my eyes. "I was a mother—we were mothers, weren't we, Allison? Allison and Hildy, sitting in a tree, and Essam and I were in love! Yeerks in love—didn't you know, Visser Three?" I don't even know if the Visser can hear what I'm saying. I don't even know where he is. "We swore that they would live because we're good parents." My mouth twists in a bitter smile. "We're good humans."
Darwin. Madra. Through the fatal veil that I'm shrouded in, I remember their names. I will always remember their names. My children.
I could have loved them—
[How long are you going to take to die, Yeerk scum?] Eva is as impatient as the rest of the Controllers at the poolside.
"Raw eggs and lettuce," I wheeze to Visser Three, "and you still don't know. You don't know and I can't wait until you find out that your Andalite bandits are—aaaaauuuugh!"
Eva makes me bite my—her—our—tongue. I'm losing control of her. I'm too far gone.
It's close. As close at the nourishing, blessed Kandrona that's mere inches away from my fingertips.
But the space between the edge of the pool and my body is my grave.
Explosions nearby, although to my ears they sound very far away. The only reason I know that something is happening in the direct area of the pool is because of the burning shrapnel that falls in pieces all around me, into the Yeerk pool, onto my legs.
[Marco's coming.] Eva speaks the words like a prayer. The pain of my death must be doubly agonizing for her broken body, and yet she is happy. I hate her.
[Human,] I say raggedly, [you shall always be my slave. I will haunt you in your dreams.]
[The only nightmares I will be having will be from knowing that an abomination like you actually has progeny walking on this Earth.]
Footsteps on the platform. I fix my eyes on the sludgy pool next to me.
Progeny, indeed.
Don't hurt them, Edriss!
"I didn't hurt them, Essam," I whisper, writhing in my personal prison. "I didn't hurt them, but I lost them. I lost our children." Jerking back and forth against the stake, I rail against my personal mental hell, at the pain of death that is reaching its climax. How did it come to this?
"We signed our own death decrees," I had said. That was so, so long ago-and yet, no time at all. Everything that I have done up until now is lost to me. I am a traitor and I am dying for it.
Hands on my body. I start screaming again. They're just noises, the noises of an animal in agony, wishing for death.
The ropes and chains lose their tautness. Someone's face in my dim vision. No—something's face.
I'm staring into the liquid black eyes of a huge gorilla.
[Mom, it's me. It's Marco.]
It takes me a second to get my breath back. And then I surge forwards, trying to escape his grasp, batting his hairy hands away. I throw my head back and shout, hoping Visser Three is watching this, hoping he will hear every last word. "Lettuce and eggs, Visser Three! Even after all this time, you've learned nothing!"
[Mom, hold on! We're going to jump.]
"You don't even have a family!" I crow into the air. "Essam and I had children! Carry that thought with you-you parasite!"
I am still shouting nonsense, but freedom from the chains has given me a second wind. If I can just escape from Eva's head, I can make my way out of her ear and land in the Yeerk pool. Safe. I will be weak but I will not die. Kandrona to spare. I will swim around amongst my brothers and sisters and never stop basking in those glorious rays.
I begin voluntarily withdrawing my control from Eva's senses.
[Edriss, what are you doing?]
"I've gone human. I've gone human. I've gone human." It's a mantra that's vibrating in my body as keenly as the starvation pains. I feel myself being picked up again by Eva's son. I'm still holding on to Eva's speech centers. I am literally shaking with the effort to pace myself. This will be the last shred of control that I will hold over her. She can't be allowed to tell Marco of my plan.
[You're going to die, Edriss! You can't cheat death this time! Where do you think you'll find freedom? You'll just have to go through this all over again when Visser Three catches you!]
[Visser Three cannot do any more harm to me, Eva.] I'm struggling to think, to act. I think of one last thing to say to Eva before I make my move. [Earth may yet survive, if humans like your son are fighting for it.]
And if Earth survives, so might my children.
I don't bother with a farewell. I merely begin sliding out of the ear canal. I feel a physical jerk as Marco picks Eva's body up and launches himself over the Yeerk pool. As fast as I can, I push myself out of Eva's host body and plummet towards the ground, blind and deaf and dumb once more but about to feel the sweet rays of Kandrona wash over my body like balm on an open—
—I hit solid ground.
The air is alive with the vibrations of screaming and brawling and bodies and blood hitting the floor. My body feels as dry as clay, seized with indescribable pain that's now laced with disappointment and terror and impotent resentment. I missed the pool. I don't know how far away I am from the edge of the platform we've landed on but it's most likely too far of a distance for my starvation wracked-body to make.
The will to live goes out of me like a sigh. I feel myself moving. Base instinct. All is dark around me. I can't hear or see or speak.
But in my blindness, I see.
Essam. Essam looking at me through Hildy's eyes. My two glowing, beautiful newborns. Madra and her huge black eyes staring trustingly up at me. Darwin nuzzling my—Allison's—breast, and me with the biggest heart in the world.
Yeerks can't love, and yet I did.
I look up at Essam. Somewhere in the back of my mind I still hear the rumblings of war going on around me—someone has me in their hands—someone is squeezing me. I am being crushed, and the pain of starvation lessens a little.
"Essam, I can't breathe," I say.
"I love you, Edriss." He answers. His eyes crinkle with his smile and I immediately begin to cry.
What a wonderful final memory. It almost makes me ignore the huge mass that is bearing down on my tiny, gray, starving body.
Instead I choose to focus on the faces of whom I learned to adore in my time as a human.
Then my perspective shifts and I see us, Essam and I and the twins, as if I am floating above them. I see us for what we were. Are.
A family.
A tiny speck of love in the dark.
I—