dreamcrystals | You take it with you. See ya.

Sender: Rachel
To: Everyone
Which: Passive dream recording
Warnings: Death, blood, child soldiers, serious injuries. Nothing in great detail, but still present..

The environment is sterile. Artificial. She recognizes the interior of a spaceship, but it barely registers to her. All she sees are enemies. Targets. Humans and aliens alike, the lead human barely more than a teenager himself, all concentrating on a viewscreen on the far wall. All oblivious to her presence until she’s nearly finished the transformation into a grizzly bear. Only then does one of them see her and yell the word “Animorph!”

And Rachel’s thought-speak voice, cocky as ever, replies <That’s right, genius: Animorph.>

The bear charges for the leader, barreling into him and knocking him across the room. A burst of light- a laser of some sort- hits her shoulder, but the assault on the boy doesn’t relent until he manages, with great difficulty, to slip past her.

Other animals have emerged from the humans and aliens around her then. Two lionesses, a polar bear, a buffalo- the boy she was after turned into a cobra. Outnumbered five to one, and yet they’re all waiting for her to make the first move.

<Well? Scared? You should be.> She sounds like she’s laughing as she says it.

She charges, and everything goes to hell.

A confusing jumble of violence and chaos. The polar bear goes down first, retreats. The buffalo keeps charging her, but she refuses to stay down. The lions both latch onto her, teeth and claws sinking in to try and drag her to the floor. Another voice, from somebody on the screen, keeps yelling a name, but she can’t respond. The screaming voices begin to blur together, the boy on the screen and the boy in the snake’s body, as she tries to fight against the menagerie arrayed against her. It’s not until a different voice speaks- a voice that those in Reverein might recognize.

<Rachel!>
<Help me, Tobias.>
<I can’t, I->

Urgently, she cuts him off.

<Help me get him! Help me get him!>

Another jumble of voices- directions from Tobias, a swipe of her blood-stained paw, and the snake is impaled, screaming, begging the other boy on the screen for mercy.

<Jake! Stop her!>

And then she bites down on his head, and he stops moving, stops speaking.

Everything gets blurry after that, dimly visible as she struggles to become human again despite the fog of her wounds. And then, once she is, once she spits the broken cobra skull out of her human mouth, she realizes it’s over. An ordinary human, surrounded still- polar bear, buffalo, lionesses. She can’t fight them. She doesn’t have to. She got the job done.
She looks at the screen. Tobias is there- human now. Crying. She tries to smile for him.

“I love you.”

Behind her, a voice says <You fought well, Rachel.> A young man’s voice. The voice from the screen. The wrong voice.

Jake’s voice.

Confused, she turns back around to see a Siberian tiger standing where the polar bear had been, swiping a massive paw at her head.

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[And that hurt. The shock. The confusion. She wasn't sure if she felt guilty for telling him, or guilty for not telling him sooner.

She'd decided early on not to talk about anything he didn't already know. She'd known it would hurt him if he learned what happened to her. She'd known this would-

Ugh, this stupid, stupid dream.

She stares out the window, if only to try and hide the tears. She wasn't going to cry, she wasn't going to let herself cry.]

I don't-

[Need anything, she wants to say. But her throat catches. She takes a breath, tries again. She can't deal with this. She can't.

She can at least tell him the truth now. She owes him that much.]

... The Yeerks found her before we did. She'd been in an accident. She was blind, she had amnesia. You saved her.

[She's alive. His mother is alive. Alive and maybe cured? And out of the hands of the Yeerks, who had her. He's angry and relieved and happy and mournful all at once and he feels like his body is going to burst from all of this emotion on top of everything he's already learned.]

[But she needs him.]

<Okay. ... Okay.>

[He tries to keep his voice even, because he's not sure what he's feeling anymore. It's all... it's a lot. It's a lot.]

<I'm... I'm worried about you right now, though. I don't imagine you want to sleep after that. I can... um. Try to like... make you something to eat? Something simple.>

[As much as he wants to run away, as much as he wants to cry, as much as he feels he can't handle it... he'll hold it together for her sake.]

[Ugh, why did he have to do that, why did he have to keep making this be about her?]

I'm not hungry, Tobias, it's the middle of the night.

[She flops back down onto the bed in irritation, which winds up a lot more juvenile than she wanted it to. For a few seconds, she just stares at the ceiling, trying to blink the stupid tears out of her eyes.

She has no idea how to recover her dignity, so she just sighs and moves on, impatiently wiping at her eyes.]

You said you wanted to talk about it, so let's talk about it.

<I'm just - I'm not good at this kind of thing. Neither of us are.>

[He lets her flop - he'd probably do the same in her position. He feels like he's vibrating with nervous tension but he doesn't know what to do. What can he do?]

<I'm not going to ask if you're okay because like... obviously the answer is no. No one's gonna be okay after that kind of thing? I just... I want to know how I can support you. Because as much as you're worried about my reaction to this - and yeah it's... I'm... I'm going to need a while to let all of this sink in? I'm still kind of in shock? But... you've been living with this. You shouldn't have to live with this alone anymore.>

I don't know. I don't know what I want.

[She mostly just wanted to stop the stupid useless tears. At least she didn't sound like she was crying, not yet.]

... I had to do it. Tom was too dangerous to leave alive.

[...And there it was. The voice wavered, slightly but audibly. Ugh.

Rachel had never been close to Tom, but he was still her cousin- and he was a fighter. Even after he was taken, he was a fighter.

Must run in the family.

A guy who charged Visser Three just so other people could go free deserved better. It was dirty, what she had to do. What the yeerk in his head made her do.]

I had to.

[It sounds a little less firm when she repeats it. She tries to inhale evenly, but it sounds shaky, it sounds like sniffling.]

[Tom. Tom? ... Man. He can't imagine... he really can't imagine what that would feel like. He has no way of knowing. He's never had any cousins.]

<I believe you. ... I don't know what happened between when I know and when you know, but... it sounds like things escalated really badly. I...>

[... He's got to do it. He hops off of his perch and lands on the floor, morphing human as quickly as he can so he can sit next to her on the bed. He's tearing up but it's... it's fine.]

I'm here. Okay?

[His voice shakes a little.]

I'm here. I'm not leaving you. I'm not...

[Ugh. She lifts her head to see what he's doing, though she can already guess.]

You don't have to-

[She doesn't bother to finish the statement. Clearly he's going to do it anyway, and she's too tired to manage it. Her head flops back onto the pillow as he finishes morphing, as she feels the weight of him sitting on the bed.]

I'm sorry.

[She tries for a while longer to just breathe evenly and restrain the tears. It doesn't get any better. Finally she just gives up and rolls over so she can rest her head on his lap and get the crying over with.]

You take it with you. See ya.

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SEEMS LIKE A GOOD /WRAP sorry I've been so slow.