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.
