Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tobias (Animorphs), Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Canon Compliant?, maybe? - Freeform, I don't even know anymore
Summary:
Tobias, Ax, and leavetakings. For ThemeMorphs, September 2014.
The short note of this story was that it was written this month right here, September 2014, for TobiasTime theme month on ThemeMorphs. The slightly-longer note is that it was also written for Tumblr user @alliecat-person, who wanted Tobias+Ax fic! You should really check out the story itself to read the long note.
Tobias should have been angry that this alien asked him about his mother. He should have said it was none of his business. Instead, he tore the words out like splinters: “I don’t exactly have a family.”
«They are your family now.» Tobias didn’t understand, then. But he learned, through a letter read by an enemy, an Andalite shape from borrowed DNA, a haunted look in blind eyes.
Now, as Jake sends Rachel to her death, Elfangor’s words, carved like a shormitor in his mind, are painful truth: the only betrayals that cut this deep are from his family’s blades.
«I want you to wear this Z-space transponder,» Ax told him, «so you can contact me after I leave.»
Tobias agreed, reluctantly (and now, how the memory burns, of deft blue fingers on his talons) but never used it. He feared he would hear Ax’s voice, or his grandparents’, and regret his decision to stay.
Now, on the Rachel, he composes all the messages he should have sent, a record of his damnation for abandoning his family, repeating the sins of his father.
He turns the recorder on. «I thought I was broken, but I wasn’t when I had you…»
This ficlet has been waiting in my drafts for months now and since it's TobiasTime (and I feel our bird boy is getting a little neglected) I think it's time to finally post it. It's set immediately after #48 The Return. It's short but I hope you enjoy it.
It was late when I returned home. I felt exhausted, tired and empty. So I went straight to bed. All I wanted to do was sleep. And forget. Just forget. But as soon as I closed my eyes the memories pressed down on me even harder.
I sat up again and stared at the wall. For minutes I was just sitting there on my bed, staring at the wall. I still couldn't block my memories out.
Suddenly I heard the familiar rustling of wings at my window. Seconds later Tobias fluttered in and landed on my desk.
<Listen Rachel, because of our talk the other day...> he started.
I cut him off. "Tobias I don't want to talk about it right now, okay? I had kind of a rough day." Rough day? It felt more like the worst day of my entire life. And being an Animorph that meant something.
"Can you just..." I hesitated. "Can you do one thing for me? Can you hold me? Hold me in a human kind of way? Please?"
He didn't answer, but he started to morph.
Once he was finished he looked at me with those tender but worried eyes. Eyes I saw all too rarely.
He still didn't say anything. He just went over to me, made my stand up by taking my hands and then he pulled me close, put his arms around me and held me tight.
I almost started crying then. Almost.
As he kissed me on the forehead he whispered: "Just know that I'll always be there for you. Always. No matter what happens."
And in that moment he wasn't a bird that occasionally turned into a human and he wasn't a fellow warrior, either.
«Will you come to our world, Tobias?» asked Forlay. «There is so much we could show you.»
Tobias imagined blue grass, red sky, the whisper of his father’s Guide Tree. «What do Andalites think of me?»
«Some pity you and wish to teach you our ways. Some see you as a symbol of what they call Elfangor’s cowardice. Some call you a tragic hero.» She added earnestly, «But not us, Tobias. You’re our grandson.»
Tragedy. Reject. Hero. Grandson. Tobias doesn’t want to be anything at all. «Someday.» In eight years, he’ll say. When his hawk body is withered and gone.
Tobias wasn’t sure what to morph for the holo-call to his – that uneasy word – grandparents. His human face, descended from Elfangor’s nothlit form? His Ax morph? Finally, he decided to be himself, perched on Ax’s back.
His grandparents stared at him a long time. Tobias blurted out, «I’m sorry, I should have morphed.»
«You made the same choice Elfangor did,» Noorlin said. «If both of you forsook your Andalite heritage, then it is no betrayal of yours, but our failure. Oh, Tobias.» His tail hung low, blade touching grass. «For my people’s sins, you must forgive me, not I you.»
I was just rereading the last chapter or so of book 54 and they spent over 3 years in space!! How do you think that was for Tobias to live on a spaceship that long, and also in close contact with Jake who he really never wanted to speak to again since y'know the whole Rachel thing?? And they spend that long searching for Ax and could you imagine how desperate Tobias must have felt as the months dragged on because he couldn't bear to lose another part of his family?? #TobiasFeelsRUs
Right, and like, after a point it would go from *urgency* to just a sick worry that stays with them constantly, an undercurrent to everything. They're eating very old food and playing card games over and over and rewatching show's they've almost memorized and carefully retreading conversational ground that won't spark fights [like rachel] [which is hard to do on a ship called the rachel]
