Author's note: This is a Rachel
and Tobias fic Set at the very end of book 23. Special thanks to Tracie
(Kitan25) who sat through my endless babble about this fic, read it, and
even helped co-write parts of it...Disclaimer: Animorphs is a book series
written by K.A. Applegate, published by Scholastic, and sold to bookstores
throughout the country. It has
been made into a TV series by Scholastic,
which is airing on Nick. There is various Animorphs merchandise out by
various companies. I AM IN NO WAY RELATED TO ANY OF THEM, HAVE NO CONTACTS
TO ANYONE, AND AM
NOT RECEIVING ANY MONEY FOR THIS FIC.
With that over with, on with the fan fic!
The Night
By:RB
Tobias:
I flew to Rachel's bedroom
window. It was closed, naturally; it must have been around really late
by then.
< Rachel? > I called,
rustling a wing against the glass.
After a few moments,
Rachel came to the window and opened it, grumbling about how she was going
to get any
sleep with birds flying in at all hours
of the night.
< Nice to see you,
too, > I said lightly, although my insides were a wreck.
Rachel brought out
a small chocolate cake with one candle. I blew it out by flapping my wings.
Neither of us
sang "happy birthday". But she said it.
"Happy birthday, Tobias."
I don't know why, but
just her speaking my name would have brought tears to my eyes...if birds
could cry.
I sunk my talons deeper
into the soft wood of the window sill, wondering if she wanted me to stay.
"Tobias," Rachel said
softly, "What exactly did you hear at this meeting with you, Mr. Degroot,
and Visser Three?"
If Rachel had asked
any question but this, I could have dealt with it. Any question at all.
But she didn't.
< I...I...nothing
much. > I started straightening my feathers with my hooked beak, uncomfortable
with the question.
"Yeah, right. And Marco
actually said a funny joke. Come on, what's the deal? You can trust me."
< Oh, nothing important,
> I said, trying to sound as offhand as possible. < Just the name of
my real father. >
Rachel studied me skeptically.
"And just who is this father of yours?"
< No one important,
> I said in as sarcastic of a tone that I could manage. < Just Prince
Elfangor. >
"WHAT?" Rachel asked,
jaw dropped. I was amazed that she remembered to keep her voice down. "You
mean to
tell me that Elfangor is your father?
And it doesn't even mean anything to you?"
< Of course it means
something to me, > I snapped.
"But what?"
< But...what am
I supposed to do? It's not like I can reunite with him and go on Oprah.
If you didn't remember, he's dead. We saw him die. >
"So? Who cares? You
can be proud of the fact that your dad was a great warrior. That's much
more then so many
people ever have."
< Yeah. I also know
that I'm half-alien. No wonder I got picked on so often, > I added bitterly.
"Tobias...You belong
with us."
No, I don't, I thought
bitterly. There was a long pause. < I... > I trailed off. Rachel doesn't
exactly approve of self-pity. And that was what I wanted to do.
I wanted to feel sorry
for myself. I wanted to feel bad because I never knew my father-my real
father-because the
ellimist had taken him away from me and
I wanted to be human-be fully human-but I never could.
"What?" Rachel asked,
staring at me with those icy blue eyes that seemed to penetrate into my
soul.
I turned away. I couldn't
stand this. I flew out the window, left with only my conflicting emotions
and Rachel's soft voice in my head.
Rachel:
Tobias was tense that night.
I could understand part of it. In the past few days, he'd found his "cousin",
found out she was only Visser Three's evil creation to trap him, found
out who his father was-and what a father he had! Prince
Elfangor! But how?-and in the meantime,
tried to help find the hork-bajir child, Bek, who was missing. And, besides
all that, some other hawk was trying to move in on his territory.
And he wonders why
we all worry about him.
At least, I do.
< I... > Tobias
started,and then trailed off.
"What?" I asked, being
thrust out of my own thoughts. I gazed at him.
He wouldn't meet my
eyes. He backwinged out of the room and started flying towards the forest.
I changed from the
T-shirt I sleep in to my morphing outfit, a black leotard. I grabbed some
pillows and lumped
them under a blanket on my bed, hoping
that if my mom came in to check on me, it would look enough like me. Then
I started focusing on the great horned owl that was a part of me.
"If Tobias doesn't
have a good reason for flying out on me like that, he is nyeeerrff," I
started to say as my tongue suddenly shriveled down into a birds tongue.
Feathers patterns
began to form on my skin as I shrunk rapidly. My feet turned into curved
talons as my legs got scaly. My eyeballs grew and grew until they took
up almost my entire skull.
My lips hardened, turned
yellow, and changed into a beak. My arms turned into wings. The feather
patterns became darker, more realistic, and suddenly just popped out of
my skin.
Inside of my
body, organs changed, mutated, shrank, grew, or just disappeared. Every
solitary cell in my body
changed. All due to Andalite technology
that I had no idea how it worked. And I could use it because Prince Elfangor
had given me, Jake, Cassie, Marco, and Tobias the power.
Prince Elfangor.
Tobias's father.
I became the
great-horned owl I had acquired. I flew out the window towards Tobias's
territory in the forest, in search of him.
Tobias:
I flew towards my territory,
hoping Rachel would leave me alone with my thoughts. God, where to begin?
I felt bad for ragging
on Rachel like I had. But Rachel had this disconcerting habit of just reading
me like a book. She
could wreck havoc on my emotions by just
saying my name. It almost frightened me.
I was almost at my
territory by then. I continued thinking, not really caring about the woods-and
predators-below.
Guess I should've been
paying more attention.
BONK!
I felt a pain. Wha?
Who?
I looked up, dazed.
Looked up at the huge oak tree before me, the one that I often slept in.
I must have been on the rough ground of my meadow, my territory.
Stupid! I cursed myself.
By not paying attention, I'd almost killed myself.
I tried to fly back
up, but I felt a searing pain through my left wing.
Great. Just great. An injured wing.
Made me easy prey for any predator that comes up. Raccoons are magically
attracted to injured birds like me. Even
an owl, if he's down on his luck.
Suddenly, an owl came
flying up, and frightened me out of my wits.
< Tobias? > The
owl asked. It was Rachel. Now I would have no choice but to talk to her.
< Geez, Rachel,
don't do that to a bird. You scared me. >
< What are you doing
down there? > Rachel demanded. < Do you know how tasty you look to this
owl? >
< No, > I said sarcastically.
Rachel ignored the
jibe as she landed next to me and demorphed quickly. As the owl melted
into the human girl-who, even in the middle of the night, in the midst
of a dark forest, still made my heart ache with her beautiful features-I
tried to think up excuses for my running out on her.
"What happened, Tobias?
It wasn't the tree, was it?"
< No, it wasn't
the tree. It was Little Bunny Foo-foo bopping me on the wing. Of course
it was the tree. >
"Really, Tobias." The
almost gentle sound of her voice made me stop my sarcastic mode. "You should
demorph, if
you can't fly."
Not demorph, I thought.
Morph. To human. I'm not human, Rachel, sorry, I'm still a hawk, and you're
still a
human. Nothing has changed.
I concentrated on my
human form, which didn't seem as natural as my hawk body had always felt.
And slowly, I
began to change.
My talons split and
grew to become human feet. My feathers ran together and disappeared, leaving
human flesh. I
grew taller. My eyesight dimmed
along with my hearing powers diminishing. My wings elongated and hands
grew.
I had become human. I realized a dim sort
of smell as my beak changed into a human nose and mouth.
Rachel looked at me.
"Tobias, why did you fly out on me like that?"
My blood rushed to
my face. Why did she always have to ask those questions? The ones that
were sure to unsettle me. I said the first thing that came to my mind-a
rather lame response; "I I I couldn't handle it. There was too much."
"Too much what?" Rachel
asked. She was exasperated. I could see it in the set of her face, which
was closer to my
weak human eyes then they ever were as
a hawk. "That's no excuse for just running out. Talk to me."
"I I " I stammered.
"I couldn't stay there. Too much emotion."
Rachel looked into
my eyes. "Your father was a great warrior. You should be proud of that."
"I am!" I replied.
"It was I you "
"Me?" Rachel replied,
startled, as she stumbled back a step.
"You, yes, you...always
you...God, Rachel, don't you know how you look to me? How you've always
looked, but
tonight...Like a rose among moonlight,
you're so beautiful, so pure..." I stopped, suddenly, hearing the waver
in my voice and silently cursing the tears welling up in my eyes.
"Tobias..." Rachel
said slowly. "I...I had no idea..."
"Don't lie to me,"
I said sharply, in a tone that barely seemed like it came from my throat
with its choked tone. "You knew."
Rachel looked away.
But not quickly enough. Even with my dim human eyes, I could still see
the tears forming
in her normally icy blue eyes. Oh, god!
I'd never meant to make her cry! I clumsily reached for her hand.
She smiled wanly at
me, and squeezed my hand gently. "It's okay, Tobias," she said. "I'll be
okay."
"Too bad I won't."
I mumbled. "God, Rachel, you think I should just perch in my tree, fall
asleep, and all the answers will come to me?" I said in a slightly louder
voice as I pulled away from her gentle grasp. "I just came from the strangest
days of my life. One minute, I'm starving
because some other hawk is trying to take my meadow and hoping that my
new-found cousin Aria is going to get me a home...I could be human...and
the next, oh darn, I don't get a cousin because it turned out it was just
Visser Three's plan to trap me, little old me, whose claim to fame is I
happen to be the son of Prince Elfangor-Sirnial-Shamtul, the arch-enemy
of Visser Three, who I saw get murdered by Visser Three with my own human
eyes...And I also happen to be one of Visser Three's worst nightmares.
God, it just looks like the universe is against me." I took in a deep breath.
"Sometimes, I wonder if it would be best to take a knife and end it all
now."
I exhaled, feeling
drained. I'd kept my emotions bottled up for so long...Why did Rachel always
bring out this in me? Why, whenever she was around, did I feel like I should
burst out like that?
I stared out into the
forest, wishing that she would leave me alone with my thoughts. I tried
to focus my mind away from her...it didn't work. Why must she plague me
like this? Whywhywhywhwhywhy?
Out of the corner of
my eye, I caught a glimpse of blonde hair. I turned around. There she was,
studying the bark
of a tree. Her blue eyes glistened
with unwept tears. God, I hadn't meant for her to cry...
She was so beautiful,
standing there, surrounded by blackness. Ghostly white moonlight and pale
silvery starlight combined to rest solely on her, like an angel. And...and
I couldn't stop staring at her.
It wasn't her face
that drew my eyes to her. It wasn't her lovely features, not her model-like
body. It was...her. Shining
like a beacon from every pore of her skin.
The Rachel aura, as I thought of it. Stong, brave, bold, smart, recklessness...it
was there.
And that's what I loved,
what I always had loved, about Rachel.
I loved Rachel. Pure
Rachel. Just Rachel.
But I couldn't love
her. I never would be able to.
See, I'm a hawk. And
Rachel is a human.
And those are two seperate
species.
I see her almost every
day. I've fought with her in battles. I've gotten so that I can almost
predict what's on her mind or what she's going to say. And she could do
the same for me. Our minds are so close they might as well be one.
But when all is said
and done, she's still human. And I'm still hawk. And that is a boundary
that must never be
crossed.
We could have been
standing there for a minute, we could have been standing there for an hour.
I don't know.
But I tapped her on
the shoulder. "Hello, Rachel."
She looked back at
me, surprised. And wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. "Hello,
Tobias."
Say it, say it, SAY
IT! My mind screamed. Tell her you love her. Tell her you've always loved
her. Just say something!
"Nice night, huh?"
I asked.
She smiled at me, for
me alone. And somewhere, in the back of my mind, I filed that smile away.
"Yes," she replied. "It's beautiful."
God, I loved her. God,
I wanted to tell her so. God, she was so beautiful that night, I wanted
to tell her how I felt. There was no way that there could have been a more
perfect moment, here, in the night, where time seemed suspended, in the
meadow where I lived and hunted. It was a moment in time sculpted by the
hand of a goddess, that seemed to be there just for the purpose of me telling
Rachel how much I loved her.
My jaw froze.
My throat stopped working. And no matter how much I wanted to tell her
how I felt, I couldn't. In this moment that should have been pure bliss
for me, my childhood ghosts came back. Of being abandoned, lonely. Of hearing
my relatives yell at me, tell me I was no good, that I was some scrawny
mutt no one loved or cared for. They came back and seized hold over me,
as I saw the scenes that had happened in my former life over and over again.
And I cried inside, knowing that my childhood ghosts would come back whenever
I thought I was happy, seize hold and make my world a terror again. I would
never be loved. I would never love. Those words had been brainwashed onto
my mind when I was very young.
But I grabbed her hand.
I grabbed her hand. It was one of the hardest things that I'd ever done.
I squeezed it gently. And I smiled at her. I swear I was radiating feelings
of my love for her.
She smiled back.
She loves me. She really
loves me. She loves me, Tobias, the birdboy, the loner, the nothlit, the
hawk, and the little boy that no one cared about or said a nice word to.
And I'm so full of
her love for me and my love for her that I thought I was going to burst.
I wanted to yell so loud the entire world heard me. Rachel loves me. And
she will, forever and ever, until our deaths. And perhaps even beyond,
for
love cannot be bound to one person, or
one race, or one species, or one time.
Surprisingly enough,
it was me who broke the spell of our newfound world. "I have to demorph,"
I told her gently. "And you have to go home, and sleep."
She flushed slightly
for not remembering."Until tomorrow, Tobias," Rachel said, smiling the
tender smile that is meant for only me.
I took her delicate,
beautifully formed hand in my clumsy human hand, and brought it to my soft
human lips. "Until tomorrow, Rachel."
She morphed the owl,
the same one that had brought her here, to this meadow. And I demorphed
to my normal
redtailed hawk shape, and flew to my normal
perch in the tough oaktree, watching her protectively.
I watched her fly away,
towards her home, towards her bed, where she would fall asleep.
And only when she was
out of thought-speech range did I speak my final words for the night, as
I slowly drifted off to a world of dreams.
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