Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

miraculoussparrow asked: "His jaw is set hard, no trace of his nervous smile, and he’s standing up straight for the first tine in her memory and the two of them are immediately, viscerally agreed. They are going to war. The others can stay or go, but Rachel and Tobias. They are doing this, because this is what they are. Who they are." I love them and I LOVE this. I love the way you write so much, it's amazing. I've read this drabble twice over. It's so good.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THESE KIDS AND I’M GLAD THAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE ENJOYING THEM.

WELL.

ONE OTHER PERSON.

Originally posted by yourreactiongifs

Also in case you want to read EVEN MORE of my start-of-the-war Rachel/Tobias feelings, I wrote this a while back.

Anonymous asked: Why the hell did Rachel have a picture of Tobias? ( Also, Tobias??? Just.. Tobias??? Tring to make the best out of a bad situation Tobias???? Coming into this I thought Marco was going to be a favourite but my heart is breaking for this boy.(halfway (?) through Book 3)

Right, so, welcome to my kingdom of fairly elaborate headcanons about Rachel’s very quiet, mostly ignored crush on the shiest, most anxious bully target in school.  She never talks about it to anyone, really.  Not even Cassie knows.  The laws of middle school are pretty absolute, and Rachel runs in radically different circles from soft-spoken Tobias, new kid Tobias, everyone-knows-his-uncle-hates-him Tobias.  Shows-up-at-school-for-breakfast-with-ill-fitting-clothes-and-bruises-from-bullies Tobias.

Rachel’s a tough kid, but even she’s not sure if she’s tough enough for that.

All the same, though, she drops a whisper in Jake’s ear–Big Jake, her gentle giant of a cousin–and suddenly the bullies start to back off, under threat of seeing Jake’s easygoing smile appear over Tobias’ shoulder with a “Hey, guys.  What are we talking about?”

Tobias never knows.  Rachel never tells him.

That’s not the point, though.  By the time Rachel decides that fuck everyone, she’s so fucking over this, if she wants to go hold some dumb skinny dork’s hand she’s gonna do it and fuck the haters–well, they walk home through a construction site.  She does hold Tobias’ hand, but it’s because he’s crying so hard he’s shaking trying to be silent, and the Andalite, the dying Prince Elfangor, is screaming in their heads and God, what else can she do except hold onto Tobias and pray?

The next day, Rachel looks across the circle of her friends and meets Tobias’ eyes, soft and light brown flecked with gold in the sunlight.  She’s never been close enough to see the glints of precious metal there.  His jaw is set hard, no trace of his nervous smile, and he’s standing up straight for the first tine in her memory and the two of them are immediately, viscerally agreed.  They are going to war.  The others can stay or go, but Rachel and Tobias.  They are doing this, because this is what they are.  Who they are.  

They go to war and it’s worse than anything Rachel’s ever lived except for how it’s not and the next day Tobias….

Tobias isn’t at school.  He’s invisible.  He blends in with the crowd.  That’s what Cassie tells her, tries to reassure her.  They might have just not noticed him.

Rachel would have noticed him, she thinks.

So.

The point is.

When she finds out that those soft gold-brown eyes and that nervous smile and those bony stubborn shoulders are gone for good, Rachel goes and finds the one place that might have a picture of Tobias.  He drew, you know, pretty well, and she goes to the art teacher and lies her ass off about looking for pictures of the after-school art club.  (She knows that Tobias was at home to sleep, almost nothing else.  Everyone knew.)  The art teacher is an easy mark.  Rachel is a sweet kid, a top student, a good girl.  Rachel walks away with a small collection of photos, and finds one that’s mostly Tobias, looking shyly up at the camera that had interrupted his work.  Brown eyes flecked with gold, a nervous smile.  She can’t stand the thought of forgetting what he looks like.

What he looked like.

She keeps the photograph.

aethersea asked: hey so what's the animorphs college au?

Right, so, I actually wrote the first chapter and put it on AO3 (PSA: the first chapter is basically just smut?  like, there will be more other stuff but the story is basically structured around a fuckbuddies-to-dating plotline, so: smut), but here is some of the behind-the-scenes of the Animorphs college AU.

So, I started reading @lathori the Animorphs books because we’re domestic like that and after two books she stared at me and went “There’d better be happy AU fic or I’m gonna kill you.”  And…um, there’s actually not a lot of happy AU fic for these books because we’re all fucking sadists, s/o to my fellow fucking sadists.  So in order to preserve my best friend’s sanity as well as my own life (um…she knows where I sleep, y’all), I agreed on a few happy AU’s to write for her.  The D&D AU and the College AU were the first two, and she wants me to write the Morph Dancer AU as well.

But the actual premise of the college AU is based around the idea that Rachel and her cousin Jake and her recently acquired best friend Cassie and his recently acquired best friend Marco all get assigned to a house living arrangement with two complete strangers.  (If this sounds absurd, let me assure you that this happened in my school, except only two of the people knew each other.)  The night before they move into their new housing assignment, the lot of them go to a party, where Rachel hooks up with the cute quiet guy from her Shakespeare class the previous semester.

Imagine her alarm when he shows up at the house the next morning with his Very Weird friend (Ax makes a weird human in any universe okay) with his one (1) bag of possessions plus a box of books.

The ensuing plot mostly revolves around Rachel and Tobias pretending not to have feelings about sleeping together while they try to leverage Jake and Cassie into so much as holding hands instead of nervously tiptoeing around each other the whole time.  Also, it includes Jake laying down some House Rules, such as #2: All house residents must be wearing AT LEAST pants and/or a shirt at all times in all public areas, as well as all pertinent underwear.  And also #5: No drinking on school nights in the house.  And also #8: Thou shalt not risk getting arrested for illegal purchase of alcohol when Ax’s adult brother is LITERALLY an hour away and willing to buy the stuff legally.

All I really have worked out for this is some general backstory and people’s majors, I haven’t even gotten through the second chapter, despite my best efforts.

Rachel and Jake intentionally went to the same college Anywhere But Home because Tom just got out of a cult and it was making life a little stressful with their parents hovering anxiously at all times.  Rachel switched from gymnastics to krav maga, jiu jitsu, and kickboxing when she was thirteen and is majoring in kinesiology so that she can open her own self-defense studio.  Jake is a history major and Rachel considers it her sacred duty to make sure he has a life outside of the library and the gym, which is how he meets Cassie, Rachel’s new best friend, and almost swallows his tongue.  Cassie is on the pre-med track so that she can become a vet, and fills all of her additional credit openings with ecology classes because she’s like that.  Marco is kind of idly majoring in comp sci because it’s what his dad does and he doesn’t have a really heavy interest in anything else, but at the end of his sophomore year he declares a poli sci major out of the fucking blue and crams his schedule to finish on time.  Tobias is an English major who wants to be a teacher, and also he has a minor in studio drawing and a fascination with birds.  And of course there’s Ax who, for some perverse reason, really genuinely loves physics and comp sci and manages to major in both at once through sheer enthusiasm.  And Elfangor is alive and kind of thrilled that his baby brother has Real Friends, and he comes over and hangs out at the house sometimes and is much beloved by all of them, not least because he provides them with advance copies of video games sometimes and also bought the house PlayStation.

Anonymous asked: tell me more about the Animorphs DnD Au. I really just need an AU where they don't suffer and just have a good time

My buddy, me too right this second.  For those of you who are not aware, that comment is buried somewhere in this recap of Book 7.

All right, so, like, here’s a basic breakdown of how it all goes down.

It starts with Jake’s big brother Tom, who, like, listen, his parents went “keep an eye on your younger brother after school on Fridays” and Tom went “that’s cruel” and his parents went “don’t be an ass” and Tom huffed like a teenage asshole and rolled his eyes and went “FINE.”  So he decides that if he’s going to be mandatory babysitter for like four hours on Friday afternoons he’s going to do something amusing with his time, and he asks Jake if he knows anything about DnD.  Jake goes “nope!” with good-natured interest because this is his big brother, and Tom’s like “GREAT we’re going to do that recruit your friends”.  And Marco’s in on the spot because he’s a fucking nerd who’s probably done reading on DnD even though he’s never been able to actually play a campaign, and Rachel agrees on behalf of herself and Cassie because she’s exasperated with Jake and Cassie and this is an opportunity to force them to spend multiple hours together.  (Cassie is unexpectedly the major sticking point here, but her parents are like “PLEASE HAVE FRIENDS AND A LIFE OUTSIDE THE BARN” so ultimately she ends up going.)

On the first day, as they’re leaving school, Rachel grabs Jake by the arm and points subtly over his shoulder.  “Hey,” she whispers, “isn’t that Tobias?”  It is, in fact, Tobias.  Actively in the process of maybe fighting a bully for his backpack–if Tobias loses his backpack, no way is his uncle buying him a new one, and he’s also going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble, so yeah he’s gonna fight for it.  Jake and Rachel don’t know this at the time, but listen, Berensons are Berensons in any universe.  Jake ambles over, all cheerfully broad shoulders and stocky build just starting to settle into ‘teen’ rather than ‘kid,’ and silently menaces the bullies into stepping down.  And then he kind of subtly kidnaps Tobias to go with them.

(Ax moves into town a month later.  He’s living with his much-older brother who used to be a soldier and now he’s done with that and working as a computer…person.  Full disclosure, I don’t know that much about Comp Sci, but Elfangor Shamtul is a programmer and he’s the rising star.  Ax is living with him because *waves hand* better schools maybe?  IDK.  That’s how Ax shows up, and they kind of adopt him because he’s new and he joins their campaign.)

Tom, because he’s kind of a dick, declares that he won’t tell them anything about the plot, except that they all have to dual-class as modified Druids.  

(I have added a cut because this got kind of long.)

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Anonymous asked: 7 and whoever you want

7: I do not believe in love at first sight.  But god damn. (Look at you.)

Two things.  First, it’s a very dangerous thing to say ‘whoever I want,’ because I go straight for the niche fandoms that I love the most. Thus: Animorphs.  Second!  It has come to my attention that I accidentally swapped two prompts—this line is actually prompt 17, and prompt 7 got used for the Sith!Padme AU.  Because I’m a fucking disaster area and my brain likes to pull switches like that on me.  (Math classes suck for this exact reason.)  But like the Sith!Padme AU is done?  And I was halfway through this by the time I realized, so I am VERY sorry but I’m doing this.

Tobias could give you the exact moment he fell in love with Rachel, as a bruised thirteen-year-old kid in a body he barely remembered.  Love at first sight was a fairy tale, but he could give every detail of the moment—it was like light being struck from a match, casting everything in a fresh glow.

Admittedly, he remembered everything about that night in the construction site, about Elfangor’s serious eyes and Visser Three’s terrible morph and the desperate giddy feeling in his chest of yes, yes, I knew it, there’s more to this world.  Which made a lot more sense, in retrospect, but of course at the time he just knew that something had clicked into place.  While everyone else was standing around being awestruck and wondering, Tobias had been too busy feeling a wash of relief that, oh God, he wasn’t crazy, there really was something else and it was exactly as spectacular as he had always believed it would be.

But even in that chaos, Rachel had been like a beacon.

He’d had a crush on her from the moment he arrived in town, of course, but then he could guarantee that about every boy at their school agreed with him, save the ones who were related to her.  He could list five girls off the top of his head who were probably head over heels for Rachel, having a crush on her wasn’t anything special.  She was clever and funny and fierce, her beautiful face was almost an afterthought.

And Tobias had needed something bright and strong to hold onto, and just being around Rachel, in the line of her sharp eyes, was a good start.

So it never did shock him, that he was in love with her.

It wasn’t her grip on his hand as they watched Elfangor die, although he was sure everyone would be shocked to hear it.  That was just…Rachel, scared half to death and still with strength and ferocity to spare.  She clutched his hand because it made her feel better, to steady someone else, and God Tobias had needed it.  He’d almost bolted right then, run back to the Andalite’s side, because he barely had a life to live anyway and he’d felt something from Elfangor’s thoughts he’d never felt before.  Some messy tangle of regret and pride and grief, all centered around a bright hard thing that made affection look like small fry. The loss of it hurt like broken glass in Tobias’ throat, sharp and bloody.  And it was Rachel’s grip on his hand as he cried that kept Tobias hidden behind the wreckage, kept him sane enough to live through the night.

But it was later, that it really hit him.

They were running and, at the time, Tobias had desperately wished for wings.  It was almost funny, now, but probably only to him—he’d never told the others how often he wished he could fly away, before he got a new appreciation for the dangers of wishes.

Here was something else the others never knew: he had three cracked ribs that night. There was no way, even with adrenaline pumping ice through his blood, that he would be able to outrun the Hork-Bajir on their tail.  Tobias’ forgotten human body was tall, but skinny and out of shape, not strong like Cassie or fast like Jake, he was slow and hurt and shocky.  And he had a moment of strange clarity, as if he could see the future as clearly as the Ellimist ever showed it to them.  He would die, and it would be awful, but the others would live and that would be…good.  They had people who would miss them, and he didn’t.  They would live to fight the Andalite’s war, maybe save the world, and Tobias would get to rest.

And then Rachel, tall, athletic Rachel who could probably have outpaced every last one of them, even Jake, slowed, and dropped back.  She was shouting, arms outstretched with a wild, ecstatic look of challenge on her face.  Tobias could only catch about one word in three, but they were…vivid.

That was the moment.  Tobias, tearing across the rough ground of the construction site with impossibility on his heels.  Rachel, screaming curses in death’s face in order to protect the people she cared about. It was more like being struck by lightning than anything so polite as falling in love, but.

Goddamn.

Anonymous asked: If you are in the mood to write pain (and, really, when aren't you in the mood to write pain): Rachel/Tobias during the early war

*mean cackling* So when I’m in a very particular mood about the little girl I used to be and how much she was screwed over, I tend to take it out on my characters.  Ergo, I am banned from touching my Alleirat story until our houseguest leaves, and will instead be writing Animorphs because how much worse could I make it.  Sorry.  And since this got pretty long and also there’s not exactly loads of Animorphs fic, I crossposted it to AO3.  If you like Animorphs, maybe comment on that shit or something.

here we stand (with our arms folded)

It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since the disastrous attack on the Yeerk pool, the sun still over the trees at the edge of the forest where it butted up against Cassie’s farm.  The horse she’d morphed, whose quick legs had saved Cassie and one single woman the night before, was loose in the field, and Rachel was cross-legged on a crate in the barn as Cassie murmured to a wounded rabbit.  Rachel felt dazed, with exhaustion and shock, as if every blink and turn of her head demanded a fresh calibration of her brain, a new moment of I’m alive and nothing is okay.  She’d spent an hour in the shower after getting home, with the water as hot as she could stand, but she could still feel the grit of the Yeerk pool floor on her palms and feet, and kept expecting to catch a glimpse of Hork-Bajir blood on her human teeth in the mirror.  

Cassie didn’t seem much better, her hands still where she would usually be smoothly going through her tasks and her voice mindless nonsense, as if she was as numb as Rachel.  The silence wasn’t quite tense, but there was an unmistakable taut feeling that kept even the noisiest patients subdued and quiet.

“Did Jake say why he wanted to talk to us?” Rachel finally asked, and Cassie glanced up, shaking her head.

“No,” she said. 

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