Fandom(s): Animorphs
Rating: T (as according to ffnet)
Characters In Chapter: Tobias, Rachel Berenson, Marco
Relationship(s): Tobias/Rachel, Tobias/Marco
I struggled to think. I should fight to protect Marco, but this darkness was much more inviting. All that helping to protect Marco would do is have me kill Rachel. The hawk mind didn’t understand why I would want to save Marco. He wasn’t anyone to the hawk.
No, wait, Marco was my mate. Part of me
tried to convince the hawk mind of that. My lover was important because he
really loved me. Rachel had done the actions, but Marco acted from the heart.
The hawk mind was then on the side of protecting the boy.
Pushing the death wanting side of my mind
to the background, I focused on a morph that would help me fight Rachel’s
Grizzly bear morph. My talons were the first to change and I as I rose up my
skin turned green. My feathers turned green and seemed to melt into my skin.
As my wings barely made the change to
Hork-Bajir arm, the blades sprouted out and I started to feel alive again. All
the harm to my red-tailed hawk body was gone and now my body was uninjured. The
final change was my two blades on my head indicating I was a female of the
species. I felt them with my hands, grimacing at what would have to go down now.
I stood up and looked at Rachel and knew
that she would kill Marco. I walked over at a quick pace and her only response
was to look at me. She knew that she still had time to kill him. I would have
to distract her and not give her any indication of what I had planned. I slowed
down my pace to make it appear like I was barely even moving.
“Rachel!” I yelled out with pain lacing
every syllable my mouth let out. “Why? I love you. It took three years for me
to find a stable way to move on. Are you my Rachel? Or are you something else
just wearing her skin?”
Rachel laughed through her thought-speak
and it made me shiver deep inside. Rachel was bloodthirsty, but she still had
had humanity in her. The thought-speak laughter that I heard now was cold and
there was no trace of the girl I used to know.
I was born Rachel Berenson. She said
as she slowly stopped laughing. When I
died, Crayak rescued me. He kept me alive. Crayak, who I used to think of as
the enemy, took the time to rescue me and the Ellimist would have gladly let me
die. The Ellimist is supposed to be the good person, but he isn’t.
I noticed her getting angrier and
sounding like I did when I thought of the Ellimist. The Ellimist who took any
chance of a normal family away from me. It scared me how much she reminded me
of myself even when it was clear that she had changed dramatically. It scared
me so much that I stopped walking towards her.
“The Ellimist can be an asshole.” I
agreed and hoped my voice didn’t waver too much. “He took away my chance to
spend any real time with Elfangor. He took away Loren’s memory of my father and
I stay away from her to make sure I don’t cause her any pain. He tricked me
into giving me my morphing power back. But Crayak seeks to destroy before
anything else. He used the Howlers to destroy entire civilizations. He used a
perverted version of the Pemalites to counter the Ellimist’s efforts at peace.”
Rachel seemed to ponder my reply as I let
the truth that she was the Rachel I had lost come fully come into my mind. She
was the Rachel I had lost and yet that Rachel was dead. A single tear went down
out of one of my Hork-Bajir eyes. I looked at Marco who knew any movement would
attract Rachel’s attention and he would die, so he stayed as still as he could.
But at least Crayak is honest about his intentions. The Ellimist just
tells lies to make you do what he wants. Rachel
finally replied. It took me awhile but I
finally realized the truth. Crayak can be cruel, but he can also be loving.
When he asked that I return to torment you I said yes.
I wish that Rachel gave a sign that the
old Rachel was still there, but she didn’t. The twinkle in her eye that I wanted
to mean that she had taken the opportunity to come back to Earth to be with me
for just awhile longer, but it didn’t. It meant that she was glad to torment me
and prove that she could leave her past behind.
I wanted to see her in her Grizzly bear
eyes, but I couldn’t and found myself still unable to move. It took all my
control not to fall over crying. I had to stay focused for just awhile longer.
I was supposed to wear you down slowly, but he made me change my
plans. She said, pointing a claw at Marco. He made me move quicker than I had planned
and now you arrived on the scene. I would’ve been fine with including him in my
torment, but he is too smart for his own good. I had planned for Crayak’s little
torture of you two to throw suspicion away from me, but Marco figured it out.
No! No! Rachel would wake up. All the
conditioning that Crayak had done to her would go away. She would become my
Rachel. She had to.
I love you, Tobias. Marco said sadly. Pick yourself up a little more quickly than
last time.
Before I could get my limbs to
function, Marco made one last attempt to attack Rachel. As he swung his arm, I thought
of how much he meant to me. How he had thrown the ball to save my life when I
had tried to end it and our time together after the war. How he was there when
I came back to him. He was strong in more ways than any of us had really told
him.
And all that power, all that strength,
was taken from the world as Rachel cut his throat with one paw and started gutting
him with the other.
No! I yelled out in pain as I saw him try to
appear strong as he died.
And then he stopped moving. Marco was
gone.
It was at that moment I realized I would
have to kill Rachel. It was either her or me. If I had not been so hesitant to
attack her before, Marco would still be alive.
No! I yelled as I rushed toward my former
girlfriend, my former angel.
Rachel laughed.
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