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

readera asked: For the softer world Animorphs, any pair. M, L, O, and T. T is made for Ax, though. Have you heard of the podcast Morph Club Cast? It is two nerds rereading all of Animorphs. All of them, even the spin offs!

For some reason this ask got lost in the shuffle a billion years ago, but I am actually for real doing all of those prompts for the Animorphs because I have no sense of self-preservation.  I specifically have already completed O: No no, we aren’t breaking up!  You didn’t let me finish.  I’m gay for YOU. (And I’m queer for math!)  It has tragic gay Andalite smoochin’.  L and M are still up in the air and I’m considering having T be someone teaching Ax to cook, AKA The grand adventure of “NO AX THAT’S NOT FOOD”.  N is going to be a Firefly AU, though.

AND YES.  YES I HAVE HEARD OF MORPH CLUB.  I LOVE THEM DEARLY.  I DON’T KNOW IF MEGAN OR CAREY HAVE TUMBLR ACCOUNTS, BUT IF THEY DO, SOMEONE TAG THEM.  IN THE EVENT THAT EITHER OF YOU SEE THIS, I SCREAMED FOR REAL WHEN I DISCOVERED YOUR PODCAST AND I LOVE IT TO BITS AND FUCKING PIECES.

readera asked: For the ask meme. I am surprised no one has said any animorphs yet. cassie. or any of the animorphs really. I'm not picky, lol.

I raise you: a handful of mid-war Cassie/Jake headcanons because that’s what I have feelings about right now.  For this meme.

A: what I think realistically

Cassie isn’t oblivious to the toll the war is taking on Jake—far from it.  He shows up to her barn sometimes when he can’t sleep, sits in the hayloft or quietly organizes cabinets, and Cassie starts making sure to be the first one into the barn in case Jake’s fallen asleep there.  (One time she is unsuccessful about this and her dad wanders in to find Jake asleep in the hayloft—he scrambles and blurts out a blatant lie about having gotten in a fight with Tom the night before and Cassie tries really hard not to cover her face because.  It’s a mess. Jake is a passable liar by virtue of necessity, but he gets jumpy whenever he’s confronted by coming up with legitimate reasons to be at Cassie’s other than wanting to see Cassie.)  Sometimes, when Cassie can’t sleep either, she wanders out to the barn herself—if Jake happens to be there, conveniently available for company and quiet conversation about dreams and nightmares, that’s nothing more than a coincidence.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

Cassie is largely unaware of the fact that she’s viewed with a high degree of bitter, bitter jealousy by a lot of the other girls at her school and not a few of the boys.  Jake is a good-looking, level-headed, friendly person, who is widely known at the school as a Catch.  This is somehow made more of a thing due to the fact that he just.  Doesn’t notice.  (This is canon, don’t even fight me on this, three girls ask him to that dance in book 29.)  Jake smiles at Cassie and talks with her in the halls and doesn’t even pick up on other people hitting on him, and therefore several of those people are deeply frustrated.  It’s made worse because what are they going to do about it. Cassie is an angel, it’s not like they can even really hate her for it, and even if they did, God help the person who decides to fuck with Rachel’s best friend.

Incidentally, no one is more frustrated with Cassie and Jake than Rachel. Guys!  Go on a date!  Watch a movie!  Hell, just get together at someone’s house and cuddle!  G O D.  She literally cannot believe how unsmooth Jake is, it causes her physical pain, and Cassie, sweetie, hold his hand, do it for Rachel, she is dating a bird and she is having more success than these idiots.

She despairs of them, she really does.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

Cassie and her mother used to be really close—like, they told each other everything. It kills Cassie to lie to her, constantly, incessantly, unavoidably, for three years.  Cassie screams in her sleep, and she tells her mother nothing.  Cassie cries for three days, and she tells her mother nothing. Cassie develops an overwhelming phobia of termites, and she tells her mother nothing.

She wants so much to be able to tell her mother the truth about just one thing, and so when her mother asks if she can ask about Jake—hesitantly, because Cassie is so withdrawn these days—Cassie barley even pauses to feel embarrassed.

“Of course!” Cassie blurts, and her mother smiles a little, almost shy.

“Well,” she says, sitting down beside Cassie, “are you two dating?”

“Um…sort of,” Cassie says uncertainly.  What does one even call her relationship with Jake these days?  On the one hand, no, they don’t exactly go on dates that much, despite Rachel’s best efforts, and there’s still that level of mild discomfort with, like, the concept of being a couple, but on the other hand…they’re so far past dating it’s not even funny.  

“Sort of?” her mother laughs, amused.  “Well, have you kissed him?”

Cassie feels herself blush and opens her mouth to say yes—but stops.  If she says yes, her mother will want to know when and how and…and Cassie can’t tell her. Can’t say yes, we kissed on another world.  Can’t say yes, and I cried into his shoulder because I thought he was dead.  Can’t say yes, I kissed him because we were facing death and I was afraid I’d never get the chance again.

Honestly, she can’t say yes at all.

So she looks away and says, “No.”

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

Right so it’s technically post war but THIS FIC.  Canon ending can suck a dick.

Also, give me an AU where everything is fine and Cassie is a morph dancer who performs on street corners like a busker (she’s the equivalent of a Julliard-trained violinist whose day job pays well and who plays in subways for fun) and Jake sees her transforming into an osprey and falls in love on the spot.

readera

replied to your

post

:

Sabbatical

This was ….. Amazing! Can we have more? * holds up bowl ala Oliver Twist

Sephie opens her eyes and the woman is still standing over her, but the asphalt is…cold.  And dry.  It’s dark, no rosy dawn colors fingerpainted across the sky, and the woman is dressed all in white–different white, not, thick swathes of cloth like burial shrouds draping down her arms and falling to puddle at her feet like water.  Sephie thinks something might be on fire to provide enough light to see, but the light is pale and wan rather than being warm and golden.  The woman is leaning on her scythe, and her eyes glint like the blade when the light catches them, metallic and sharpened to a cutting edge.

“You’re awake,” the woman says without looking down, and it doesn’t sound like she’s asking.

Sephie sits up and it’s easy, blissfully easy, no pain or tacky blood sticking to her skin.  She’s wearing something unfamiliar, a plain dress in the same white liquid cloth that the woman is wrapped in, leaving her arms bare, and when she presses a hand against the floor, she thinks it’s stone.  Marble, maybe, with only a trace of gloss, stretching away in all directions until it meets the walls, where it seems to merge seamlessly into the vertical climb to the cave-like ceiling, dripping with stalactites.  The throne at the far side of the room is plain, barely more than a chair with a table beside it, both apparently sculpted wholly out of the floor.  

“I’m not, though,” Sephie says, and it’s only by speaking that she realizes her voice works.  It’s strong and firm and not at all lifeless, and Sephie closes her mouth, gathers her will to stand.

“You know,” the woman muses as Sephie considers the matter.  The stone is very hard–if she tries to stand and falls, she might hurt herself.  Or, of course, she might not.  She doesn’t know if it’s currently possible to hurt herself.  “I expected a great many things when I went on my sabbatical, but you were not among them.”

“I’m sorry,” Sephie says as she pulls her legs beneath her and nudges the dress out of the way.  “I think.”

The woman looks down at her at last, startled, almost distressed, and says, “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that.  My sister may have some adjusting to do, but you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t quite attached.”

“Your sister,” Sephie repeats as she rises cautiously to her feet.  She doesn’t know if it’s that her mind still expects her body to be broken or simply that it’s been a very long day already, but she wavers dangerously, and the woman puts out a hand that Sephie catches hold of at once.  The hand is long-fingered and delicately calloused and pale–unhealthily pale, deathly pale, Sephie had always thought, and she bites back a titter now.  Deathly pale!  The hand is also strong, and the arm attached to it equally so, and the smile on the woman’s face is warm enough to make up for the cold stone still chilling Sephie’s bare feet.  “I’ve met your sister.”

“Yes,” the woman says.  “We fought in your coffee shop.  Or, rather, my sister came to yell at me in your coffee shop.  She has some strong opinions about my sabbatical.”

Sephie nods, slowly, and realizes that she’s still clutching awkwardly at the woman’s free hand.  The long, strong fingers hold her own in a grip as firm as stone, though, and so instead of trying to let go, she holds on tightly and asks the obvious question.

“Am I dead, then?”

“That’s correct, Persephone,” the woman says, apparently delighted.

“And this place is?”

“The audience chamber.”

Sephie nods again, even more slowly than before, and looks up at the woman.  It was less noticeable with the counter between them, but the woman is a full head taller than she is, her masses of white curls storming down her back like a crashing wave.  The scythe does not reflect light, for all its perfect polished shine, and the letters on it are in a language Sephie has never seen and yet seems to be a textual equivalent of a long-forgotten tune.  She can read them anyway, for all that they try to skitter from under her eye, and thinks of a Latin phrase she heard once.

“And…”  Sephie takes a deep breath with lungs that do not breath and listens for her heart that does not beat and thinks to herself–with neurons that do not fire–that she is hardly even surprised.  “And who are you?”

The woman smiles at her, and gives a small twist of their hands so that the grip is less awkward, and raises the knuckles of Sephie’s hand to her lips.  The touch is electric–quite literally.  It kicks through Sephie’s chest like the time she let a finger rest on the prong of a plug as she touched it to the outlet, her vision flaring brightly for a moment until the woman’s lips leave her skin.  

“I have many names,” the woman says as she lowers their hands again.  “Many of them forgotten, some of them remembered.  You can call me Death.”

readera asked: You should do the work!

THANKS

Also I see your other ask and am getting there my dude, thank you for your patience.