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Post by Suji on Oct 10, 2009 3:34:44 GMT -5
Disclaimer: A (possibly ongoing) future-fic. Any representations of other people's characters have been done generally without their permission and in no way reflects what they have planned for their character. I don't claim to recreate anyone's characters completely accurately, either -- there will definitely be significant changes to characters involved since the idea is that the war has changed everyone. Feel free to create your own future fictions, I'd love to see them. =)
"War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it causes is beyond telling or meaning; but war was our condition and our history, the place we had to live in."-Martha Gelhorn
"-arke." People filled the building, both physical beings and representative images alike. Entire holographic conferences of individuals were projected on the walls, making the room look more like a honeycomb-hive of a Taxxon nest than the human-built structure that it was. Though the ventilation was excellent, there was still the smell of many bodies in close proximity to each other -- bodies that had never been meant to be in the same galaxy, let alone sitting side-by-side. It wasn't oppressive, but it was noticeable: somewhere between the smell of a zoo and the smell of a city. There were no zoo or city sounds, however. There weren't even any war sounds; the types of noises that Suji had grown sickeningly accustomed to over the years. No meaty tear of ripping flesh, no guttural alien cries of pain, no begging for mercy, no roars or howls of animal-fighters... maybe that's why she'd spaced out. It was almost tranquil here, for her. Of course, even as disconnected as she was, it was obvious that the rest of the room was far from calm. They might have been dead silent, motionless save for the occasional blink, but the spectators here were visibly tense. Everyone except for her. Well, and creature contained on the other side of the podium. The enemy that she'd spent the last decade of her life trying to eliminate: her most hated foe. Visser 2. Of course, he'd been promoted to Visser 1 as the war came to its final and bloody close. He'd since been stripped of his rank and was without title, but she'd always know him as Visser 2. And for that matter, many Yeerks still referred to him as Visser 1 out of rebellious support or cautious fear. "Ms. Clarke." Contained in a small Kandrona pool that Suji surmised was lavish by Yeerk standards, Visser 2 was undoubtedly relaxed. She couldn't read his features for obvious reasons, but in her mind she pictured him precisely, in vivid detail: the body of his previous host reclining in a chair as one of her soldiers had been brutally -- seemingly endlessly -- tortured. The soldier had been captured and sacrificed the ability to ever return to his own body again in order to avoid infestation. All the same, there had been plenty of horrifying ways to inflict physical and psychological torment upon the Animorph, lynx's body or not. Eventually the Animorph had broken. He lasted far longer than anyone could have expected, but the Yeerks had perfected slow and agonizing torture as a means for information extraction when their usual method didn't work. The solider gave up everything he could, which in a gruesomely fortunate way, hadn't been too much. In any case, it wouldn't have made much of a difference -- the Animorph's faction had put together a slipshod rescue plan against Suji's orders. Of the six Animorphs that set out to rescue their captured comrade, only one survived. He'd been the faction's leader; not unlike Ray, whose face Suji could barely even remember now. He became Visser 2's new host. The video of the torture and the infestation of the Animorph host had been delivered to Suji in the most direct way possible: it'd been broadcasted all over the major cities for a couple weeks. The last 20 seconds or so of the clip had addressed her by name. The only comfort -- cold as it was -- was that the faction leader had been new and hadn't actually ever been to the NYC base. Even now, staring at the glass container holding the most vicious being she'd ever met, she saw his host. He'd had an easy smile before Visser 2 twisted it into a nauseating, sadistic grin. He'd never have the chance to get that smile back, either. Less than a week after the war officially ended and he was freed of Visser 2, the ex-faction leader -- unable even to walk after being without control of his limbs for so long -- somehow found the strength to commit suicide. Suji was calm. There was nothing anyone in this room could do to her that would be worse than what she'd been through. But inside of her, as masked as it was, lay a bitter-cold hatred for her enemy which she knew would never, ever be slaked. "Your Honor, the witness is not responding. This is tantamount to contempt of the court-" Aware once more of where she was, Suji's eyes moved towards the attorney -- Visser 2's legal representative -- in front of her. "Continue." Suji instructed the woman. There was no hint of an apologetic tone in her voice. Suji had murdered two children the year she should have been relishing her new ability to vote in upcoming elections that would never be held. She'd personally assisted in the death of millions of sentient beings before the pre-war states would have allowed her to legally drink alcohol. She'd shifted between human, alien, and animal so often that she not only had wondered what exactly she was: she'd progressed to the stage of accepting that she'd never know. She'd lead an international group of teenagers in the battle to take back the freedom of humanity from its oppressors. And she had won. Suji looked over the lawyer disinterestedly. The Controller flustered slightly, and smoothed down her crisp suit-jacket with shaking hands. "Let's get this over with," Suji said, sitting back in her seat at the witness stand.
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Post by Suji on Aug 5, 2010 3:57:37 GMT -5
The woman interrogating Suji was good. For a lawyer. Unfortunately for her, however, Suji had experienced (and in some cases, commanded) the best in the business. The attorney struggled for emotional appeals, staged what were probably meant to be grand accusations of villainy. Suji gave up no fight, and answered all her questions truthfully and in as little words as possible. She allowed the attorney to twist her words, and showed no sign of caring. She was called a murderer, and she was. She was called a mass murderer, and she was that too. She was accused of taking in refugee human children and turning them into soldiers. Another check on the list. “Ask yourselves -- if this woman had put an assault rifle in a ten-year-old’s hands fifty years ago, would she not have been a criminal?” Suji didn’t bother to correct her that there had never been anyone younger than thirteen as long as she’d run the war, and that it was the youngest ones who had most deliberately and devotedly searched the Animorphs out. “Once drafted into the war, there was no way for these children to escape. Animorphs were too valuable, too much of a liability to lose, weren’t they Suji? You couldn’t let them walk free, unless they fall into enemy hands? You didn’t just turn children into weapons -- you turned them into slaves just as readily as any of your enemies.” Suji was silent for a long time. If the words had affected her in some way, it didn’t show. Her eyes moved past the attorney, settled on a familiar face amongst the pews. A familiar face that she wished she hadn’t seen. Drake. Why was he watching this? But of course he was. Of course he’d come. She had a bad feeling that if she searched the area more closely, she’d recognize even more people. Drake had changed over the years. They all had, certainly, but it was strange and disheartening to look at someone and remember them as someone else. The war had made him harder. Maybe not as hollowed out as most, but there was no escaping what years of battles and barely surviving did to you. It’d never made him cruel though, even in an absent, neglectful way. Now he was staring at her, and the anger was clear on his face. Not just for the attorney, either; it was leveled completely at Suji. When he realized she was looking at him, he shook his head slightly, still staring at her. It was a gesture of severe disappointment. Though the attorney trying to condemn her for war crimes couldn’t so much as make Suji flinch, that one look from her old... comrade made her stomach knot up. Still, Suji was nothing if not in control of her emotions. Her eyes moved back towards the attorney. “I’m sorry. Was there a non-leading question in there somewhere?” The woman’s eyes flared with fury, and Suji watched her lips press into a thin line. Before she could retort, though, a voice came from the judge’s panel. The panel was not actually present in the room. It was unknown exactly how many judges sat on it, and what their races were. Their names were not released. They witnessed the trial from a small pedestal near where a judge’s stand might normally reside; undoubtedly the entire scene was projected for them in a remote location somewhere, life size. Hell, they probably had all kind of other information running at the same time: exact transcripts, pulse monitoring, pupil dilation, you name it. “Ms. Clarke.” The voice was artificially filtered to sound neither young nor old, male nor female, human nor alien. “We would like to remind you of the gravity of your situation. As you have waived your right to attorney, you will need to follow courtroom procedure when voicing objections. Fail to comply and we will be forced to declare you in contempt of this court.” Suji didn’t respond to her disembodied scolding. “Proceed, Ms. Glenn.” The attorney proceeded indeed, with a smug grin on her face. - - - - - - - Suji had zoned out again. She wasn’t remembering anything, wasn’t thinking anything over. If anything, she was doing her best to be as mentally vacant as possible. Across the room, Visser Two was speaking. His “voice” was different than how Suji had come to know it; a computer translated his words, vocalizing them as they left a speaker set up in front of his pool chamber. Even as she did everything in her power to ignore him, however, her hands were clenched tightly (and unconsciously) into fists on her lap. “-have called Ms. Clarke a ‘Hero’ in this war. How would you respond to that, Zalir218?” Suji tried to fight against the current as it carried her mind back to her surroundings, but the more she struggled, the more aware she was. “Well, a hero can be a lot of different things to different people,” the voice emitted. It was computerized, but obviously a very sophisticated, intuitive program. The voice was slightly male, and you could only tell that it wasn’t natural speech when you listened hard enough. “I’m sure she is a hero, to her people.” How gracious of him. Suji’s fingernails bit into her palms. Still, she didn’t feel her own fury, had removed it from herself. Her body, however, could not forget. Her hatred for Visser Two had been so ingrained that her pulse responded to his mere presence. “Are you not a hero to your people, Zalir?” The voice chuckled. “Heroes don’t lose. I clearly lost this war.” He spoke with the same calm assurance that he had always had. There was no doubt that Visser Two would be charged with war crimes in the double digits, no doubt that he’d face capital punishment in some form or another. This trial wasn’t about his sentence -- it was about Suji’s. “And how did Ms. Clarke win?” “By being every bit as ruthless as we were, of course.” He let that hang in the room. Suji could picture his host body forming the words -- the dark brown hair, the awkwardly tall body. Her breathing became a little shallower, but otherwise she didn’t react. “I’m sure you all know the numbers. Some 1.26 million Yeerks dead at the Hoover Dam, killed off in what counts at the only thing our kind knows of home. Millions more in other pool attacks, those often with human casualties in matching sets. But, like I said, you all know the numbers.” He paused. “Suji won because she knew how to treat her troops like pawns. The best kept secret of this whole war is that our lovely Animorph Commander here was just as vicious to her own people as, say, a Visser needs to be.” Suji tasted blood, her eyes focused in front of her but unseeing. “You see, with the Empire came a certain level of bureaucracy. Sure, you’d get some very touchy higher-ups every once in a while, but overall life for the vast majority of Yeerks consisted of the same monotonous things as a middle-class individual living in your United States.” Suji’s eyelids flickered. In her peripheral vision, she saw Drake leaning forward in his seat, fidgeting just the slightest bit. She had a brief flashback to him spinning in a chair, or tapping his foot during faction meetings. Mostly he’d reigned that habit in (like so many things about himself), and even now it was barely noticeable. Still, it showed that he was being affected by what Visser Two was saying, growing quietly outraged. Of the hundreds of people attending the trial, both in-person and virtually, he was in one of the “better” spots near the front. It didn’t really surprise her: he’d been one of the most senior officers in the Animorphs. She refused to meet his gaze. Drake was probably just as upset with her for not interrupting Visser Two. “Suji knew how to use her people. She knew their strengths, and she played to them. She knew their weakness, and she compensated for them. Of course, if they were too weak, too slow... well, she left them behind. And if they were really too weak, well, she killed them. Or had them killed, I suppose. That’s the problem with child soldiers. At the beginning they’re so willing to join because they want to save mommy and daddy, but when they find out what it means to pull the trigger, a lot of them don’t have the stomach for it yet. Suji made sure to cull those kiddies quick.” More blood in her mouth. Her teeth felt too sharp. They cut deeply into her gums, but she refused to unclench her jaw. Treason! She wanted to shout at him. Only for acts of treason! Only because you can’t lock an Animorph up! She had to keep swallowing down the blood to avoid letting it seep past her lips. Her palms bled into her expensive suit, hidden behind the witness stand that was her tiny wooden cage. “So is she a hero? Yes. My host could have told you that much. Though... Suji?” The voice asked for her, and she knew she was trembling with the effort to hold herself together. She tried not to listen, tried to clear her mind. If he managed to get her to lose what was left of her tenuous grip on control... She had to be better than that. Let them roll out the guillotine and lop off her head for her sins, but she wouldn’t let him have the satisfaction of- “He didn’t hold out hope forever, you know. You were always his hero, but he was a smart kid.” Suji fought, as hard as she could, to block him out. Her eyesight kept shifting: the room would become brighter, the people more distinct, the colors less important than movement, before becoming normal again. “Do you want to know the day he realized it? That you couldn’t save him? That you wouldn’t-” “THAT IS ENOUGH!” A half-roar came from the collected audience. Suji, her body suddenly her own again, looked up. Drake was standing, his hands grasping the wooden bar that separated him from the front of the courtroom. Only his hands were barely hands at all: his fingernails were black, talon-like, and she saw that they’d sunk into the banister. His mouth had been pulled back into a snarl that revealed incisors far too pronounced to be human. The beginnings of a horn had begun to protrude from his left temple. All the while his skin prickled and smoothed repeatedly, sliding through different shades, as if it couldn’t decide what type of fur it was supposed to take on, or if it was supposed to change at all. Drake was caught between morphs, at least three that Suji could recognize. Most of the veteran morphers had developed this condition. During the war, it’d been a boon: eventually they’d found that they could morph on instinct, their bodies changing almost instantaneously. When you felt threatened, you were already halfway morphed before you had even pinpointed the exact danger. All you needed was the barest mental image of what you wanted, and BAM that’s what you were. The really long-term soldiers had perfected moving through morphs so fluidly that you barely saw the human in-between. What Drake was experiencing now, though, was what they’d come to call the Crux, or just Crux. Sometimes your emotions ran too hot and you couldn’t stop yourself from trying to morph, like in some kind of Wolfman flick. Only with Crux, you didn’t become just one animal: your morphs struggled, cycling in strange patterns. In his protective rage, Drake’s body was eager for claws and horns and fangs, so he grew them out of his own private little morph selection. The effect was, without fail, monstrous. Within a heartbeat, over a dozen different weapons were leveled on Drake’s still-shifting form. The silence of the courtroom was destroyed with muffled gasps and the sound of chairs scraping as people either tried to see, or tried to move away. The attorney shied back, her face stricken with fear. This was an Animorph problem, something most of the world still didn’t know about, and Suji had done her best to keep it that way. “Order!” The judges panel commanded. “Order! Mr. Blear, if you cannot control yourself, you will be barred from this trial.” Whichever judge was speaking, they didn’t seem at all shocked by the display. If anything, they sounded almost sympathetic. The fact that they could address him by name was a testament to his own post-wartime honors. “Zalir218, you are out of hand. This court is adjourned until tomorrow evening. We expect more restrained, orderly proceedings for the future.” The judges panel went offline. Visser Two’s communication box went offline with it. As the room shuffled, its inhabitants waiting for instructions on when to exit, Suji watched Drake. His eyes were still focused on Visser Two’s pool, glaring. She could practically see the sequence playing out in his mind; he’d smash through the grate that was supposed to protect the fragile Yeerk body inside, and then he’d squeeze the slimy slug body until it popped. None of this was anything she could particularly disagree with. Slowly, he returned to normal. The horn sucked back into his skull, and his mouth became softer, lips fitting over his teeth once again. When his nails retreated to their usual length, there were scratches left in the wood. Suji found herself hoping that he didn’t get a splinter. At last, when her personal guards came to escort her from the building, Drake looked over to her. Quickly, she looked away. Suji didn’t think she could bear to see all his disappointment again. |
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Post by Suji on Aug 9, 2010 23:16:08 GMT -5
Suji left with her guards through the courtyard. Night had fallen, and it was chilly: it was Spring, but the temperature still threatened snow from time to time. Suji came and went as she pleased, and the courtyard offered a quicker way back to her accommodations. She wasn’t allowed to leave the city, but she wasn’t kept in a cell, either. It’d be pointless anyway: bars and cages were useless against Animorphs, especially an Animorph like her. The courtyard wasn’t bad, though in the distance she could still hear the murmur of a crowd, the sound of camera crews. The press should have known that she wouldn’t be making any statements; she never did. Still, she supposed that that was their job. “Suji.” The voice called out from behind her, not far away. It must have surprised her guards, who hadn’t heard anything, because they both spun, Dracon weapons raised. As soon as they saw who it was, though, they immediately lowered their weapons, just enough so that they weren’t aimed at the man. Suji stopped walking, sighed a little. This conversation was going to happen, and here and now was probably better than later. Besides, she owed Drake that much. Suji dismissed her guards with a quiet word. Then she turned around, and saw him, and what instantly taken back to-
The Eve of the Final Battle
This was it. Tomorrow was do or die, and a lot of people would die. A lot of her people. In return for what? Thirteen of the enemy?
The Council of Thirteen, Suji reminded herself. Not just any baker’s dozen of Yeerks. The most important slugs in the entire galaxy. And tomorrow was the day the stars aligned, the day that a decade’s worth of planning came to head. They had one shot. It would either work, or fail miserably and cost Suji the lives of her most experienced, dedicated soldiers.
The base was silent. She knew that almost no one could actually be sleeping, as much as they needed their rest for tomorrow. It was eerie to have all of her old comrades under the same roof, but at the same time, it felt right. This was how the last stand should be: everyone together again, like old times. Old times, Suji thought sadly to herself. She’d been fighting long enough to be able to look back on “old times” in the war with fondness and a certain nostalgia. They all could.
Knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she went over the plan again and again. She worried at it like a dog with a bone, scratched at every inch like it was a rash until it bled in her mind. Reminding herself that this was the plot they’d been hatching for years upon years, all of the top thinkers in the fight against the Empire, didn’t help. Tomorrow, she kept telling herself. Tomorrow I’m the failed leader of the resistance, surrounded by the carcasses of my friends.
Or you and your friends have delivered humanity into freedom. The latter seemed too good and wonderful to hope for. It offered only the barest shade against her too-bright, too-brutal thoughts, but it was there: hope. Suji couldn’t say she was the greatest proponent of hope, but when it came down to it, she’d only lost sight of it very few times during the war. It had kept her fighting, even when she didn’t realize that was what drove her forward.
When she couldn’t stand herself any longer, Suji crawled out of her bed. Her room was luxurious by most Animorph standards: the bed was comfortable and large, and the room adorned with all sorts of maps and gadgetry. Plus, it was all her own. She stood, stretched, and took a moment to overcome her fear of what the next day would bring. Then she left her quarters, shutting the door behind her.
Padding quietly through the complex, Suji headed for area that had been established for her officers, all faction leaders previous to this mission. They each had their own rooms as well, though not quite so well-furnished as hers. Taking a breath, refusing to let herself run back to her room like the little girl she no longer was, Suji knocked on one door in particular. Even though the knock was very quiet, the door swung open almost immediately, as if the person on the other side had been waiting for her.
She stared up at a very sleepless Drake. “I-” She began, in a whisper, to explain herself. Then she closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, she’d regained herself. “Tomorrow, for us, the world ends. Or it doesn’t.” Her eyes searched his, and tried not to see how he had changed -- tried not to see the reflection of herself in them, and how that had changed too.
Drake reached out, his hand trailing down her arm to her wrist, then taking her hand. “It doesn’t,” he whispered back, and then Suji was past his door, heard it close behind her, and let tomorrow be tomorrow.- - - - - - - Drake was standing some dozen feet away. He still had his shoes on, which meant he hadn’t even had to morph to move that silently and evade all the other guard detail that would have been between the courtroom and Suji’s exit. He was good -- if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be alive. When they were alone, Drake began to walk towards her. She fought the urge to shrink back. When they were about six feet away, he stopped. As much as she could see the changes that’d grown on him and into him, his face was still preternaturally young. She knew hers was too; for the decade and a half they’d been fighting this war, they looked liked they’d aged maybe ten years between them. As far as Suji knew, the youth wasn’t just cosmetic, either: she was as healthy as a 25-year-old amateur athlete. Another long-term effect of constantly morphing that no one had anticipated. Their bodies didn’t experience the same wear and tear of everyday life, or at least never for very long. Suji thought it went deeper that that, even. She wasn’t a doctor or a scientist, but in a way it seemed that every morph seemed to halt time, or slow it, for their true bodies. So they temporally slipped, just a little, with each half an hour as a frog or a songbird. It wasn’t exactly the key to immortality, but it was about as close to eternal youth as humanity had ever been. Which was a bittersweet thought: yes, the troops she’d lead had been young, and had died that way. The biggest difference was in how Drake held himself. The lanky limbs that had always seemed to her like they were slightly off-balance were tense now. The tiny curve of laziness had gone out of his spine, and he stood straight, shoulders back. The expression on his face was different too: the scowl, the hardness behind his eyes. He’d never been one to get angry before, and even towards the end he’d still opted for a collected composure, but now he was furious. And, Suji knew, he had every right to be. “So this is what you left for.” He practically spat the words, looking her up and down. Suji stared at the ground between them. Once she made up her mind about something, it was almost impossible to change, and they both knew that. “You wanted to come here, stand in for some farce trial, while refusing any legal counsel, for what, Suji? So you could be the war’s whipping girl? Is that it? Damn it, look at me!” He raised his voice, shouting at her, something she could remember him doing so infrequently that she could count the moments on one hand. Suji looked at him. In the moonlight even his harsh expression was softened. The anger in his eyes only went so deep; she could see that under it was pain, and fear. Fear that she had indeed committed herself to whatever kamikaze mission this was, and that he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it. Fear that they’d managed to survive the war, but here was Suji, looking for a final way to destroy herself. And that he’d have to watch from the sidelines, completely helpless to stop it. As she stared into his eyes, for a moment Drake wasn’t there at all, but somewhere in the past. Suji bit her bottom lip, and hoped it wasn’t a bad memory.
The Final Battle
“Suji?” Drake called out. He’d just demorphed, healing away some fatal injury or another. The room they were in was full of dead things: dead humans, dead animals, dead aliens. “SUJI!” He shouted, coming out of whatever daze he’d been in. He looked around frantically, scanning the bodies on the ground. Several yards away he spotted a lion, its fur white but dyed in patches of red and pink from blood and gore. Pushing himself to his feet, Drake ran to it.
The lion was still breathing, though shallowly. One of its back legs was completely missing, and Drake didn’t have the stomach to look around for it. As a matter of fact, the entire hind portion of her morph looked like it’d been mangled, crippled. “Suji,” he said urgently, kneeling down. He smoothed the lion’s mane back from its eyes, as if it were hair. When you spent as much time as they had watching your friends become animals, you started to treat their animal morphs differently. As it was, the lion’s head was heavy, but its eyes opened, a startling blue. Drake had been fighting this war so long he didn’t even bother going through the ’I never would have believed this could happen to me’ thought process.
“Suji, you need to demorph.”
The blue cat-eyes focused on him slowly. <<Did we get them all?>>
“It does not matter, Suji-”
<<Did we?>>
“I think so. I think so, now please demorph.”
<<Yeah. Yeah, okay.>> Slowly at first, but then with all the speed that the veteran morphers tended to have, Suji demorphed. Pretty soon Drake was no longer holding the head of a lion in his arms, but Suji’s upper body. They were both dressed in what looked like real military uniforms: sleek and black, with lots of morphable pockets. Somewhere along the line they’d upgraded from looking like teenagers who raided a Lost and Found bin at a gymnastics studio to something that could be taken seriously.
Suji leaned against him, taking a moment to regain herself. Drake found himself shaking, both from exhaustion and relief. What they’d accomplished wasn’t real to him yet. They may very well have just won the war; he found himself much less concerned with that than the woman with her head against his shoulder. Finally she looked up at him, and parted her lips as if to say something, but Drake did not give her the chance. Without thinking about it, he leaned down and put his lips to hers.
They kissed passionately and awkwardly, teeth clinking here and noses butting there, but that was fine. They had time now, so much of it that he had no idea how he’d fill it all, without the war. They would learn how to kiss properly. They had an entire lifetime ahead of them, after all.
Which struck Drake as so profoundly beautiful and so long overdue that tears ran from his eyes, and he realized that Suji was crying too. - - - - - - - Drake blinked, and he was back. When he looked at her, their was tenderness in his expression that still had the power to make her knees feel stupidly weak. But then he remembered his anger, and morphing-youth aside, it put years on him. “Why are you doing this?” He asked coldly. She’d already given him reasons before she left, bad ones, excuses really, but he knew what she’d say. It’s about doing the right thing, she’d told him the first time, and that was the most upset she’d ever seen him in the time since she’d known him. Drake had always been an intelligent guy, and over the years he’d grown more and more impatient with her martyr-complex (in direct proportion to how much he cared for her). To her credit, she’d mostly outgrown the habit after becoming a faction leader, and by the time she took Cassie’s position on, there was absolutely zero time for it. “Is there even a reason? Were you just disappointed when the end of the war did not take you with it?” “Drake,” she said, half-pleading with him. His jaw clenched hard, and she lowered her eyes again. “I don’t get it. Help me understand, Suji. We won. We were- we were happy. Weren’t we?”
Six Month Anniversary of the Fall of the Empire
Suji looked out over Rio de Janeiro, the view of the city at night something spectacular to behold. Parades wove through the streets and in the distance, over the Guanabara Bay, fireworks exploded. Their dazzling lights were reflected in the dark waters, and as their sparks fell they also seemed to rise up across the bay, rushing to meet each other where sea met sky. It was December, but they’d been travelling ever since the end of the war, always to new, tropical locations. For the past six months it’d been forever warm, with clean air, exotic animals, and pretty beaches.
The sliding door of the balcony opened behind her, and she felt the air conditioning waft out. They’d both gotten used to the hot climates, but Suji was always grateful for air conditioning. It still seemed like a luxury, something almost gluttonous. The door slid shut again. Two arms looped around her, and Suji leaned back as Drake rested his head into the crook of her neck.
“Your city,” Suji smiled. A soft breeze blew through every once in a while, and his warm breath was tickling her neck. “Look at that. A sawfish float. How do they even know that was one of your morphs?”
“You would have to ask them,” Drake replied, and she could hear the cryptic smile in his voice. The truth was, no one down on the streets even knew they were here. Very few people in the entire world knew exactly where Suji or Drake were, for that matter. They were alive, and well, and that was as far as the general population knew. A lot of the most important Animorphs were following suit: the household names had fled to various corners of the world, avoiding the media. There wasn’t an attention-seeking one amongst them, and Suji thought that was a testament to their character. In a way, it just made the public love them more: the silent, barely seen saviors of the world, who asked for no repayment, wanted no worship. All anyone seemed to want was to try to salvage something of a normal life.
They watched the city a while longer. Signs of Drake were widespread, along with some of his morphs. Amongst the other Animorph memorabilia was the recurring image of a white lion: it was more visible and recognizable than Suji’s real face, even. A symbol. And every time the Yeerk’s had tried to tarnish it, they’d only given it more power. Once, they’d even rounded up a real albino lion, and broadcasted it “attacking” some Hork Bajir. The lion was killed. The idea had been to sap the hope of everyone who looked up to that white lion and the resistance it represented. Of course, when Suji wasn’t dead, for the second time, the plan backfired. People began to think she was immortal; other rumors were that a lot of the Animorphs actually shared that morph, and the white lion wasn’t any one person in particular.
But that morph was her, just her, and she was far from invincible. Still, it’d helped to give the resistance an image to rally behind.
“You know, they’re already almost done filming the first major motion picture about the Animorphs?” Suji couldn’t help but smirk as she said it.
“I heard. Did you see who they cast for us? I do not look like that at all. I am far more dashing.”
Suji snorted, rolled her eyes. “It’s strange to think, though, isn’t it? All the people working on it -- the actors, the crew -- they were all probably Controllers for the last decade. Maybe even longer. And now, for the first big project since getting their freedom, they’re going to make a movie about the war.”
“It’s not that unbelievable.”
“I guess not. I wonder what the morphing will look like,” Suji said, a little whimsically.
“Probably much nicer than it actually is.”
“Probably.”
They stood together, not speaking, while the fireworks boomed and the city cheered. Eventually, Suji felt Drake shift behind her. Gently, he turned her towards him, kissed her cheek. “Let’s go inside.” Without waiting for a response, he picked Suji up, took a moment to gain his balance, and turned towards the door. She laughed while he fumbled with the handle, while also holding on tightly, expecting to be dropped at any moment. Somehow he got it open though, in a feat of dexterity, and shut it behind him with his foot.
Before walking over to the bed, they kissed. “Ow,” Suji mumbled, when his nose poked her eye. This was a fairly frequent occurrence.
“Sorry,” he murmured, course-correcting. He staggered them over to the bed, and -- with no small amount of glee -- allowed them both to drop onto it. There was a significant bounce, but they avoided headbutting, and both of them laughed. Drake plopped down on his side, supporting his head with one arm as he looked down at her.
“You know, one of these days I’m going to be too heavy to carry,” Suji told him.
“Nonsense. I will find a gorilla to morph before that happens.” Then, as if the idea was to much to resist, he went on. “And if we need to go across the sea, I’ll turn into a whale. And if we need to fly somewhere, I’m sure there is some kind of large bird on some planet, and you can ride on my back.”
Suji made a face. “That’s kind of creepy. I mean, a giant bird?”
Drake, feigning indignation, turned on her. While holding himself up with a hand on either side of her, he mock-stared down at her, affronted. Of course this set the bed to bouncing again, which she was sure he was aware of. “Creepy?! Creepy! I have seen you turn into a cockroach! What’s wrong with giant alien birds?”
Suji laughed, and mussed his already too-long hair with both hands. They were both in need of a trim, but him moreso: Drake’s hair was at just the length where it had begun to stick out at all angles. She linked her fingers behind his neck, pulling him down. “Nothing. Nothing is wrong with giant alien birds,” she said quietly, and she watched his eyes close as he leaned down, careful to tilt his head enough so that she wasn’t poked in the eye again.- - - - - - - “Yes.” They had been happy. The happiest Suji had ever been. But she had a duty, didn’t she? They called her for the trial, and if she hid away somewhere, didn’t that make a point about the Animorphs, about humanity? Didn’t she have to be take responsibility for all the horrible things she’d done? Maybe it was part of her old routine of looking for a way to punish herself, but this was bigger than that, too. This was history: winning the war had been the hard part, sure, but they had a fresh start now: alien and human alike. They had to treat each other as equals, go forward together. If she didn’t show up for the trial, that would be sending a different message completely: that the Animorphs were above the law, above repudiation, something they’d already been criticized for since the war began. “Then why did you leave?” “I had to show the world that the Animorphs could be held accounta-” “Oh not this again,” Drake growled, talking over her, but Suji found her anger too. “What, so that’s not important?” Suji bristled, and Drake’s eyebrows rose. This was more the person he was used to; fighting back rather than being backed into a corner. “Sure everyone loves us now, and fifty years from now they’ll love us again when all the history books have been re-written. But do you know what they’ll do to us in the meantime, if I skip out on this? We’ll be publicly crucified. Factionalism will start again. The Yeerk Peace Movement will become less and less cooperative. If I don’t do this, it might just be setting us up for another war, ten, twenty years down the line.” “I do not care.” Drake set his shoulders, stared down at her. He meant what he’d said. “And neither should you.” “It’s my job to care!” “No. It was your job.” He took a few steps closer to her. They were both within arms reach now. “They need you, Suji. I need you. Do not go down this path. Visser Two destroyed enough lives, do not give him all of this too.” “I’m doing it for them,” she said, eyes brimming with tears. “They- they shouldn’t have to grown up in a world where people get away with war crimes just because they’re important. The world needs, they need a world where, where evil deeds are punished, not swept under the rug-” “No.” Drake interrupted her, grabbing her shoulders. It was the first physical contact they’d had in months, and she wasn’t surprised to find that she missed it, even if it wasn’t exactly comforting. His hands gripped her firmly, without squeezing hard enough to hurt. “Suji, they don’t need any of those things. They don’t need a perfect world. They just need their mother.” She looked up at him, into his deeply green eyes, and bit down on her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. “What am I supposed to tell them when they ask why they don’t- why they do not have a- a-” Drake’s voice broke on the last word, and she watched as a few quick tears spilled over his eyes. He cursed under his breath, a habit he’d picked up from her, and wiped roughly at his eyes with one hand. “What am I supposed to do?” Suji felt her own eyes water, unable to see him in emotional anguish without feeling it too.
One Year, One Month After the Final Battle
“What do you mean, you are leaving?”
“I have to do this.”
“You cannot be serious, Suji.”
She moved to go around him, but Drake blocked her. Neither of them raised their voices: in the other room the twins were sleeping. Something like clockwork or fate, Rian and Cassandra had come into the world roughly nine months after the fall of the Empire. Fraternal twins, they’d been born healthy, both with shocks of dark hair.
For the past four months she and Drake had been caring for them, occasionally making babysitters out of what had once been the war’s fiercest Animorphs. It had been magical, unreal in its simple goodness. The spell had broken when word was sent out that Animorph Commander Suji Clarke would be tried for war crimes alongside Zalir 218, formerly Visser One. For the past week she’d been in a daze, unsure of what to do. Her first instinct was to hide; there was no one that could find an Animorph if they wanted to stay hidden, even one as well-known as Suji. But as time had passed, she’d slowly changed her mind.
What kind of person would she be if she hid? Wouldn’t that mean she had something to hide from? What would her little girl and boy think when they’d grown up? She’d have to chose between leaving them, or taking them on the run with her. Ultimately, the turning herself in was the lesser of two evils, as far as she was concerned.
And deep down, the worst of it was that part of her wanted it. She’d never really felt like she’d deserved any of this: Drake, their children, life itself. So many of her troops had died, barely into their adulthood, and their only fault was that they had trusted her. Meanwhile, after all the nightmarish things she’d done (necessary or not), she got to live out happily ever after. Suji was a war criminal; shouldn’t she be tried as one?
Suji tried to go around him again. Again, he blocked her. “I am not going to let you do this. We have two children, you cannot just leave them! You are not Visser Two, you don’t need to stand trial for anything! They cannot touch you Suji! You saved the world!”
“How much of it did I destroy first?”
Drake looked like she’d hit him, jerking back and blinking. “Is that what this is about?” His voice was low, disapproving. “So what then, beating him on Earth was not good enough? You will follow Visser Two into Hell because you need to suffer that much?” Suji stared at him, her neck craning from the close angle. “I am not letting you do this,” he repeated.
“How are you going to stop me?” Suji replied, voice hushed and deadly calm. They stood there, locked in their gaze, for at least a minute. Her eyes watched his, waiting to see what he’d do. In her head, she was already reciting all of his morphs: she knew them all, their strengths, their weaknesses. That had been only one aspect of her role as Commander.
She just hoped it wouldn’t come to that. For one thing, it couldn’t be healthy for a relationship. For another, this room wouldn’t withstand the kind of brawl that any morphing would lead to. Drake seemed to realize this too, and he was unwilling to fight her. He shifted his weight, looked away. Suji, sensing her cue, moved around him to the door. When she opened it, she looked back. Drake was still facing away from her, his shoulders slumped in shock and defeat.
Suji had already said goodbye to her children, her babies. She’d kissed them each on the forehead while they slept, and she already regretted that they hadn’t been awake. She wished she’d seen their matching, bright green eyes.
No. The longer she lingered...
Suji left.- - - - - - - “Come back with me, Suji.” Drake pleaded. “Please, forget this. Just come back.” “I can’t leave now,” She replied, and it was more of a concession than he’d ever gotten before. “I’m in it. I can’t leave. It’ll be worse than if I ever came at all.” Drake drew breath sharply, but said nothing at first. Finally, he sighed. “I was afraid of that. But you cannot let it continue like this. You are letting them...” He half-turned away, looking into the distance, his eyes still wet. ”Do you know what it’s like? To listen to that woman equate you with Visser Two, as if what you have done is comparable?” Suji’s eyes flicked to his, and he immediately pointed a finger at her, stopping the protests and equivocating he already knew she was preparing. “No,” her ordered, curtly. She let it lie. “It is disgusting. She is trying to build a name for herself, launch a career off the back of this trial. Do you know how many attorneys they had to go through before they could find anyone that would represent Visser Two, let alone prosecute you? You cannot let her do this, Suji. Don’t be a... a highlight on her resume.” He shook his head, and when she didn’t say anything, he continued. “You have no idea what it’s like to watch. It is... heartbreaking, Suji. It is heartbreaking. You sacrificed so much, too much, to let anyone do this to you. You are a hero, and you do not deserve to be dragged through the mud.” Suji flinched with the effort of biting back the usual litany of self-deprecating comments. It was a natural reaction for her, and had only become moreso after the fall of the Empire. Not that she regularly gave her “I’m not a hero” speech -- or any kind of speech -- to the press. But there had been a fair share of formal dinners with World Leaders where she’d practiced the lines. At least, there had been such dinners until the day that Drake had turned to her, during a brief moment of solitude. “I really do not like wearing this tuxedo,” he’d said with a look of irritated frustration that for some reason, she’d never been able to forget. He’d been fumbling with his collar and bow-tie every time he thought someone wasn’t looking. Suji had excused them both, and in a way, that’d signalled the end of their dignitary endeavours. They’d started their tropical paradise tour shortly after. “It is not just me, either. Every person in that room wants you to stand up for yourself. That’s why they are there. They did not come to watch you take a beating from some woman who had probably resigned herself to slavery as soon as she was infested. They came to see you. They want you to reassure them, Suji. They want you to tell them that the war is over, that everyone who fought for freedom fought the good fight, that it wasn’t in vain. They already know it because they wake up every day without a slug in their head, or without a host screaming for mercy. But they want to be told, told by the person that lead the Resistance, that the war is over and we won.” He raised a hand to her cheek, tenderly swiping away a loose lock of hair. Suji closed her eyes, and Drake’s palm stopped briefly at her temple, warming it. “We did win,” she quietly, leaning into his touch momentarily. “So then start acting like it.” She opened her eyes, watched him warily. Then, with a heavy sigh, she nodded. “Okay.” Drake smiled, and she could still see the places where his tears had fallen over his cheek. They embraced, a gentle but lasting hug. “That is of course,” he said, voice muffled by her hair. “Only if you really will not run away with me right now.” Suji didn’t run away with him, but she did make it back to his hotel room. |
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