Chapter Text
A cold feeling washed through Escafil, something that froze his legs and made his tail stiff and arched. For a moment, he felt a terrible surrender within him, a delusional hope that he could go back thirty minutes, or even thirty seconds, to a time when this was not a part of his reality, a time before the consequences of this turn of events could have even been plausible.
Instead, he chose denial.
<You're not trying hard enough,> he said to Cirell, immediately diving for the demorphing ray that would do the job for her. <You're distracted with your ridiculous female problems. I should have done this in the first place.>
<Escafil,> Tlaxick whispered, glaring slightly. Cirell continued to flutter her wings, unable to hold still.
<Why won't it work?> Cirell kept crying. <You said this was easy, Escafil! I should be able to use technology that an arthritic lump of decaying flesh like you could use!>
Escafil charged up the ray. His fingers were trembling and he almost dropped the device.
<Just hold still, Cirell. We can still fix this.>
She tried to obey, but her head bobbed up and down in a threatening way as if Escafil was a predator. He pointed the beam at her, finger hovering over the engaging button. He shut his stalk eyes and curled them close to his head in a gesture of involuntary terror. Please, he begged nothing, please let this work.
He engaged the device. A low, warm humming in his hand indicated that it was working. Cirell's avian head continued to bob.
She stared at him, and he could do nothing but stare back. There they were, trapped in this static moment, unwilling to move forward and unable to go back.
They all stood still for a long time until Tlaxick finally said, <Oh, no.>
Cirell began flapping again, but it was not incoherent. Her front wings swept forward, lifting her off the table, and a sweep of her second and third set sent her clear above their heads.
Escafil felt dry terror rise within him, weaken his knees, burst out of him as a cold sweat. Tlaxick wasted no time to hunt after Cirell. He had experience catching riled Kafit birds.
Escafil was overwhelmed, but found himself heading for his computers. The demorphing ray clattered out of his hand when it brushed against the edge of his steel desk. He swept his fanned hands over the minimalist controls of the computer and engaged telepathically. Readouts became visible in his mind, tones at different octaves indicated when something had loaded, a faint, warm sensation passed through his chest when the computer had the information it needed to begin the calculations. He viewed Zero-Space as the software allowed him—a strange mix of color and sound and feeling that twisted in on itself, dimensions represented through the perceptions of different senses, smells showing density, sight showing energy flow, sound and touch representing nodes of connection to normal space.
Grinfarn was right. It had shifted. Escafil loaded his calculations and allowed his mind to organize all of the new variables into them, the smell of a warm sunrise passing through his mind, the sight of his wife on their wedding day, all different signs and indicators that the computer recognized as direct commands.
<Calculations complete,> the computer finally responded in harsh thought-speech. Escafil opened his eyes, realizing that he had been lost somewhere in his artificial world of fake perceptions. He read the results. Blinked, unbelieving, and read them twice more.
He turned a stalk eye to Tlaxick. He was waving his arms as Cirell did laps around the dome, aiming straight for the wall before twitching her wings and changing direction.
He felt submerged in that terrible hope, again, that this was all a dream, or that he somehow wasn't responsible, that someone would come through the door and fix this problem for him, that no one would be hurt, that all this could be remedied. But he was not a coward. He stepped away from the computer and the soft comfort that his programming offered and walked near Tlaxick.
<Cirell,> he said to the bird. <Come down, Cirell.>
<Where is the sun? I can't feel it on my wings! Where is the sky?>
<Cirell.>
<No, I can't feel it, I can't feel any air, I'm trapped in here, there is nothing but dust and dirt. This is not the sky. Where is the sky?>
<Cirell!>
<I can't breathe, I can't breathe!>
Cirell's laps had been getting wider and wider, sounds of her feathers brushing against the holographic wall made Tlaxick and Escafil wince. Finally, she was too late in her turn, barreling into the wall at an oblique angle to the sound of a soft thud and crunch.
Escafil bounded over, Tlaxick right behind. He was careful, spreading her crumpled form, untangling the mass of stringy flesh and feathers. One of her wings had snapped in the middle, a pencil-sized bone sticking through her skin, mottling the iridescent feathers with deep, purple blood.
<What have I done?> He whispered to no one as he tried to set the wing straight. Tlaxick handed him some veterinary bandages as Cirell stirred helplessly in his grasp.
<I can't breathe,> she kept saying. <I can't breathe.>
<Tlaxick, get me a sedative.>
<Sir?>
<Don't make me repeat myself.>
Escafil looked back in frustration when Tlaxick did not immediately respond, and saw a pale, sickened, grieved face standing behind him. Escafil glared, and Tlaxick gazed back, finally nodding and heading back into the cage room.
The hyperventilating, puffed creature did not calm in his grasp, as she would have in her normal form. He realized that he was a predator to her, a danger, a larger animal, not a comforting lover. Tlaxick returned and Escafil dutifully emptied the syringe into her trembling form.
<Put her in your largest cage and make sure it is clean and comfortable. And leave the door open. I have work to do.>
Tlaxick stared at him in some mixture of disbelief and fury, but obeyed his order.
Escafil headed to his computer, now doubting all of his calculations and the years of work he had sacrificed to obtain his device. The energy expended by a morph could only keep a channel open between Zero-Space and normal space for an amount of time that depended solely on the current relationship between the two. But Cirell was still Cirell. Her brain did not become the Kafit's after the connection was severed. Her Andalite mind, lost somewhere in Zero-Space, could still think and communicate with her Kafit body. There was still some kind of connection established.
Lost in Zero-Space, with the rest of her body. The body containing his offspring, his child, now disfigured and mutilated by the extra dimensional folds of a universe that, by all calculations, was entirely devoid of anything.
He couldn't take it anymore. His tail, charged with adrenaline for hours now, flung like a rubber band into his computer console. Sparks showered all around, and he heard cries of distress from the cage room. Tlaxick came bounding in, prepared to fight the intruder off, but calmed and lowered his tail when he saw Escafil there instead of a saboteur.
Escafil continued to unload on the computer. The low, pleasant lighting and hum of power flickered and died, leaving a useless lump of ridiculous technology. Escafil picked up his device and flung it across the room, though the strength in his arms could not move it that far. He stomped over to it and raised his tail above it, ready to bisect and destroy the last ten years of his life. Just as he felt the power in his lower back and tail reach its climax, unleashing all the frustration and grief within his tired form, he sensed Tlaxick's sudden approach, as the young male, perhaps less intelligent but clearly more fit, blocked his blow.
<It cannot exist,> Escafil seethed to him, raising his tail again, aiming now for his assistant. <We should destroy it now so this never happens again.>
<No,> Tlaxick said, and Escafil suddenly felt the boy's strength, the confidence and self-assurance that kept him coming back for his daily abuse and belittlement. He backed up. Tlaxick stood his ground.
<Cirell will be dead within ten years, Tlaxick. I've killed her. I haven't just taken decades of her life, I've corrupted what little she has left. How can that sacrifice be acceptable?>
<If you destroy the device, the sacrifice will be meaningless,> Tlaxick said.
<It is a weapon,> Escafil grieved, putting his trembling hand over forehead. <I'm a warmonger without even meaning to be.>
<It is a tool. Tools are without affiliation. It can be constructive or destructive. You get to choose how it is used.> Tlaxick bent over and picked up the device, holding it carefully under his arm.
<Doctors. Give it to the doctors. Let some good come out of this.>
<Yes, sir.>
<Tlaxick?> Escafil said suddenly.
<Escafil,> Tlaxick answered.
<I'm going to bring her back,> he vowed. <You can work with me. It will be unglorified work. But I'm not leaving this lab until she stands before me, as she was born.>
Tlaxick looked very sad, and glanced down at the device with his stalk eyes. <I'll be here, sir. No matter how long it takes.>
Escafil kept his word for a long time. For weeks he barely left his lab, leaving only for the occasional exfoliating scrub and bathroom break. He took infrequent naps at his desk. After a few days, Cirell came back to her senses, encouraging him to go home, or at least go outside for a run, but Escafil refused. He moved every variable in his equation he could think to move, he reconstructed the device entirely, he performed experiment after radioactive experiment to widen and reintegrate patches of Zero-Space with coordinates in normal space. He worked and worked, until lines etched into his forehead and his skin hung soggy and soft off of his stiff, stressed frame. Tlaxick worked with him, though his impatience was starting to show. They both knew there was nothing to do, but neither would admit it.
He did make one small breakthrough that, at the very least, could possibly prevent something like this from ever happening again. He'd been too hurried, too pressured to push his equations far enough, but he had inadvertently discovered a new universal constant by testing enough connections between normal and Zero-Space. The bridges could stay open, at the very least, for 123 minutes, based on the amount of energy his device could output. That was the threshold, the very lowest time limit, that did not depend on how the two realms interacted.
He would tell everyone 120 minutes, just to be safe. So nothing like this would ever happen again.
But other than that, no headway was made. Tlaxick looked gaunt, Escafil looked pale. They were losing their minds, sacrificing them to some unattainable ideal goal.
It was Cirell who finally got both of them to stop.
<I am still me, Escafil,> she entreated as he studied readouts of her synaptic energy, hoping for some kind of spike in connectivity that could bring her back.
<You are not you enough,> he replied.
<Escafil,> she said quietly. <Escafil, it is done. Please accept it. Don't sacrifice your own life because mine has changed.>
<Changed?> he laughed, recording the data and comparing it to the results from the previous day. <That is the euphemism of all euphemisms.>
<Do you think I'm incapable of living just because I'm no longer an Andalite? Do you think there's less to enjoy? I can fly, Escafil. Well, not now, but you should see the spectrum I can view. And the paranoia, that terrible sleeplessness is gone. I can rest, now. My life is not over.>
<But it is broken.>
<A lot of things break,> she said. <Like your marriage. Is your life over because your marriage is broken?>
Escafil gazed up at her and felt a bruise churn in his hearts. <I found you. You fixed that,> he argued feebly.
<And I have found something new as well,> she said. <You cannot fix me, Escafil. It is done. But…well, maybe not.>
<What?>
<You haven't left your lab in weeks. You should go visit your wife.>
Escafil shook his head. <That cannot be fixed either, Cirell.>
<You still love her.>
He waved his stalk eyes. <I still love my mother, and she died twelve years ago.>
<Brysist is not dead, Escafil.>
<Why are you encouraging this?>
<Because I don't want you to sacrifice your life for me,> she sighed. <Nothing would make me unhappier than to see you lose all semblance of happiness on my behalf.>
Escafil frowned.
<Go, Escafil. I'm not going anywhere. I promise.>
<If it will make you happy,> he sighed.
<I hope it will make you happy,> she responded.
Escafil reluctantly went home. It was late at night when he arrived. When he got there, he was surprised to find Brysist waiting for him.
<Where have you been?> She demanded.
He disintegrated. It surprised him, how suddenly and how uncontrollably he crumpled. He wrapped her hard in his arms and she stood still, neither accepting nor resistant. He cried in his Andalite way, begging her for comfort and forgiveness, admitting to every indiscretion he had committed since they had begun to drift apart.
<-and I didn't come home because I didn't want to see you, because you only gave me continual bad news about our sterility, and I was so tired of failed attempts and disappointments, and I drove you from me, my disgust with our failure made you hate me, and I turned away, I turned to my lab assistant, and I had an affair, and Brysist, she took to child like you never could, and I would have had it with her but she refused, but she was terrified and I made her into a Kafit, Brysist, I killed her for doing the only thing I wanted, the only thing she couldn't give me.>
He knew she couldn't understand all of it, but to his surprise, her hand moved to the back of his neck and around his torso.
<I know, Escafil.> Her grip was soft at first, but tightened in resolve and some weak but strengthening, hibernating, resilient love.
<How?> He asked, pressing his hand against her face, wiping the line of her cheekbone the way she liked.
<I just know. I know because you're my husband. You must know my indiscretions, too,> she sighed, looking down, humble. Escafil did not, narrowing his eyes in confusion.
<I had an affair with Zydrin five years ago,> she admitted.
Escafil pulled away, surprised. <What?>
<I ended it. He told me that he loved me. And I couldn't reciprocate.>
<Why not?>
<Because I didn't. I still loved you.>
Escafil scoffed, burying her in his chest, resting his chin on the top of her head. <That must be why he hates me so much.>
<I hated you too. I still do. But only because I never stopped loving you.>
<Yes,> he sighed, agreeing, forgetting how wonderful it felt to have her pressed up inside of him. <I still love you too.>
He held her for a while, remembering her smell, remembering the way her hand always managed to travel down and massage the tension from his chest. <I suppose we'll have to execute each other for our infidelity,> he said.
<I didn't know you could be so romantic.>
<Is obeying the law romantic?>
She smiled up at him. <I've wanted to kill you for a long time, Escafil. But let us live at least through the night.>
<I think that can be arranged.>
He slept for the first full night in weeks, his wife comfortable in his arms like she had been on their wedding night. They were not healed, but the bone had been set, and perhaps one day it could support weight again.
He kissed his wife before he went back to work the next morning, and when he did, she smiled.
He stared at his computer readout for a long time in silence, as Cirell read a different display.
<Have you been paying attention to the news at all?> She said, in far too conversational a manner.
<No,> Escafil huffed, losing a train of thought that had promised to be fruitful.
<A group of Yeerk renegades attacked an Andalite outpost on their homeworld.>
<How unfortunate.>
<It's war, Escafil.>
He turned a stalk eye to her. Her wing was still slung. She had been flightless for almost seven weeks, but her spirits had lifted considerably.
<So what?>
<You can help them.>
<No,> he said. <I'm not allowing this technology to hurt anyone else. It's done enough damage. Let it only do good for now.>
<It will do good, in the hands of the military. Maybe the ultimate good,> she said.
Escafil turned a stalk eye to her. The Kafit's eyes were hard and uninviting, foreign and soulless. But if he looked hard enough, sometimes he could still see that sarcastic glint, that mischievous and beautiful smile.
<Aren't we all pacifists?> He asked.
<Yes,> she said. <They want bodies, Escafil. They're blind, deaf, senseless slugs in their natural form, and they want to see, hear. Feel. Experience life in a way that their disabled, natural forms cannot.>
Escafil glanced back at his device. He could give them that. Without the expense of forced enslavement or all-out war.
<I thought Seerow's Kindness was what started the war in the first place,> Escafil said.
<Yes, but you do not surrender the things that define you just because of one unfortunate outcome.>
Escafil didn't know quite what she was referring to.
<You think the military will make the right decision with it?>
Cirell shrugged, grunting a little as she shifted her sore wing. <That's up to them, unfortunately.>
Escafil gulped, still staring at the wounded bird, wishing against all likelihood that one day, it would be Cirell again.
<Is this what you want, Cirell?>
<Yes, my love. It is what I want.>
Escafil winced at the epithet. After all he'd done to her, he had still managed not to break her heart.
<Then it is what I will do.>
He made the announcement later in the week. Fanfare, once again, for his scientific breakthrough. They would start manufacturing his device in bulk within the year. In the meantime, many of his colleagues shifted their focus to help him. Neffergil began working quite extensively with him. Sometimes she took her work home with her. Escafil did not mind delegating. His role as the sole bearer of blame was quite a heavy burden, and he was glad to have it diffused. Spread the acclaim, spread the blame.
It was nearly a year and a half since they began their work. Tlaxick's wife had given birth to a daughter, whom Tlaxick was kind enough to bring by the lab every once in a while. She was a curious little girl, and found a quick trust and fondness for Escafil. Sometimes Escafil's wife came by the lab, just to say hello, since he still did not find much time to go home. His sleep was still tainted by the memory of his ultimate failure, which still overshadowed all the glitches and malfunctions that appeared through the later stages of beta testing. Phrases like hereth illnit, nothlit, frolis maneuver, and estreen became normal parts of the Andalite lexicon. Cirell gained a fair amount of notoriety and authority as the first Andalite trapped in morph. She was patient with all the different researchers who studied her, and as optimistic and forthright as she could be in interviews with the media. The people were entranced and sympathetic to her. She wrote a best-selling memoir which Escafil transcribed, even though the computer was more than capable of recognizing her thought-speech dictations.
The war had been on for nearly two years when Escafil received another call from the now-War Prince, Alloran-Semitur-Corass.
<You must resent me,> the young man said, eyes now heavy with the burden of war.
<Why do you say that?>
<I have turned your device into a weapon of mass destruction.>
<It was capable of that before it left my hands.>
<I still believe it will play a part in the outcome of the war,> Alloran said. <I still believe the consequences of your brilliance have not yet been completely unveiled.>
Escafil couldn't help but chuckle. <My lover a Kafit bird, my invention a weapon. So little good has come of this, I can only hope you're right.>
<Our work never means what we think it does,> Alloran said. <Our expectations are always foiled in the end.>
<Yes. They always are.>
It was over thirty years later. The war had been long and taxing, and though Escafil had not experienced it directly, its effects were plain everywhere on the homeworld. Friends and colleagues received urns of their loved ones, filled with the only residue from Dracon fire that could be scraped up. Population controls were relaxed for the sole purpose of breeding more soldiers. And that young War-Prince, one of the only Andalites who had used Escafil's technology to its fullest extent, had become a direct weapon of the Yeerks.
Escafil could only laugh at the irony. He was through with mourning his failures. Cirell had died after eight years in her Kafit body, and not from Soola's disease, as she had planned. His wife had warded off terminal cancer through the use of his device for a few years, but death had eventually claimed her as well. Tlaxick's eldest daughter checked up on him occasionally, sometimes accompanied by her little sister, though Escafil mostly preferred solitude. He paid intermittent attention to the war, until news came from an exotic, far away planet called Earth.
Elfangor, a great hero who even Escafil had read a little about, had given his technology to five alien youths.
And they had most definitely foiled his expectations.