Note: The first few sections are familar, but important. Set at Book 13 (the Change). Thought-speak is italics in double parentheses.
BOUND
It's not meant to be like this.
It's not what I planned at all.
- The Walk, by Imogen Heap
Tobias stared back with unblinking eyes. "You want my help? Fine. Then I want yours. You're just about all-powerful, according to Ax. You can make entire galaxies disappear if you want. I don't know why you don't just make things happen the way you want them to. But, hey, whatever."
Tobias looked him right in the eyes. Right into eyes that were a disturbing mirror image of his own. His old, almost forgotten human eyes.
"You want me to lead these Hork-Bajir to this place you've put in my head? Fine. But I want to get paid for my services."
"And what do you want, Tobias?"
"You know what I want," Tobias said, almost choking on the words. "I want to be human again."
The Ellimist didn't answer for several seconds. "Are you sure this is what you really want, Tobias? Do you really know?" The Ellimist asked. "And if you get it, will you still know?"
And suddenly, without any sensation of movement, Tobias was back in the dark of the forest. His hawk's head on the slightly damp grass, outlines of trees looming up around him. Shadowed by the stars.
Tobias' feathers, drenched with water, began drifting down the stream as he struggled furiously within the raccoon's grip for freedom. For air.
The raccoon was going to eat him, and it didn't care whether Tobias was alive or not before he began. He shook Tobias' body underwater, banging him against the rocks in the swiftly moving water.
The raccoon's busy fingers picking at Tobias' feathers, pulling them out painfully in clumps as it dug it's claws into Tobias' skin. Digging.
Tobias screamed. Yelling in thought-speak so loud that, had he been verbal, his throat would have been raw.
But the forest was deaf to his cries as he flapped his one good wing, uselessly, under the water.
A voice boomed between Tobias' ears. So loud and close that if he didn't know better he would have thought there was another person standing there beside him.
Watching as he drowned. Died.
"YOU ASKED ME FOR PAYMENT IN EXCHANGE FOR USING YOU. WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR REWARD NOW?"
The Ellimist! Relief flooded over everything, washing away even the raccoon's prying fingers from Tobias' mind.
((Now! Now! Yes, now would be a really good time!)) Tobias screamed in thought-speak.
Several agonizing seconds later, "IT IS DONE" echoed through the bird's skull.
((What's done? Nothing is done, you lunatic! I'm still a bird!)) Tobias cried in desperation, kicking fuitively with his claws. Uselessly, as the raccoon scrapped Tobias' body against the stream's bottom.
"THE ANDALITE GAVE YOU A POWER. USE IT."
The raccoon's eyes were hungry, staring down at Tobias as one might look at a plump and juicy steak. It's fingers ran under the useless wings, pulling through them.
At first, Tobias was too insane with terror to figure out what the Ellimist was saying. His heart beating erratically in his panic.
Then it dawned.
"TWO HOURS, TOBIAS."
Two hours! Tobias couldn't breathe for an entirely different reason now.
"REMEMBER, TOBIAS. THIS IS WAS YOUR CHOICE."
His heart pounding wildly, his skin itching. Everything in the distance suddenly becoming obscure. Vague.
His spine shifting, lengthening as his body began growing, changing. Becoming human.
"THIS WAS WHAT YOU WANTED, WHAT YOU ASKED FOR."
The raccoon fleeing in fright at the first sight of sliding and shifting feathers.
And Tobias, Tobias lay on his back in the stream, naked. The water burning and tearing at his skin in it's reckless pace. His pale, pink, uncomfortable and fleshy skin.
His head hit a rock as the change completed. His too-big lungs awkwardly took in air. His too-long legs cramped in the strange position. His arms floundered, tried to flap, tried to fly.
His body was too big, too heavy. Unfamiliar. Useless.
But human, Tobias thought fiercely. He was human.
This was what he wanted!
It had to be.
Tobias ignored all other thoughts, and struggled to sit up against the odds.
Tobias stumbled along, his new - old, he fiercely countered mentally - body strange. The legs too long and awkward, his toes getting stubbed against rocks and sticks. The pines of the forest floor hurting him.
He had to get to the others! He had to hurry!
Tobias took off at a run. Tripping, and falling on his face. He slid under his own weight, and tore up his chest against the dirt and sticks and pieces of woodland scattered across the ground.
His arms uncooperative and aching, he slid them under himself, getting scratched by the needles and rough dirt beneath, and pushed himself up. His legs burning and wobbling, he carefully balanced himself on all fours.
His fingers dug into the dirt as he mentally stilled his trembling legs. Stood.
Everything felt so much stronger against his exposed skin. No feathers to resist the wind brushing against him, freezing him. To halt the sensation of dry, cracked leaves under his hands. His feet large and fleshy, open to the cutting rocks and stones.
His vision faded, almost lost. Colors blurred and subdued. Sounds muted, barely there at all.
But he was human.
Tobias picked himself up and ran. Stumbling again and again until, bit by bit, he began to gain a rhythm. Began to fall less and less.
It felt so .. strange. Amazing. To be running. To be down at ground level with things rushing past. His body worn and tired already, but still he ran.
The ground was close below. It almost was scary, in a way. His heart terrified, called for altitude. Pull up! Pull up!, echoed through his whole being.
Tobias' soul cried for the sky. It was dangerous, flying too close to the ground.
But no matter how he tried to hurry, he was not built for speed. The human body - his body - moved slowly and awkwardly. It lumbered along.
The stubby legs wouldn't move fast enough. His legs wouldn't move fast enough. His friends were still almost a mile away. He'd never make it in time to help like this!
Tobias stopped, panting heavily. His heart was racing, his body torn with stratches and scrapes. Sore and bruised, with sweat running down him, dripping from his brow into his eyes. Hazed his already dim eyesight.
What to do? What could he do? This morph-
It was his own body!
Tobias let his legs fold under, and pitched to the ground. His breath shaky, he leaned his head back and looked to the sky. The heavens.
He couldn't see very well, not between the scattered leaves and branches. Not between his faded vision in the dark. But the sky, he knew the sky was there.
Faded spots of blue poked fuzzily through the trees here and there, just enough to reaffirm, to satisify.
Was it possible..? Could he, could he just remorph? Back to his old body - the red-tail? Back to the hawk?
DNA wasn't affected by injuries. If he morphed back to the red-tail, the broken wing would be gone. Healed, whole and complete.
The others had done it. They had morphed out of injuried, useless bodies. (Human. He was human.) And when they re-morphed, the bodies were whole again!
Could he..?
He had to try! It was so stupid. He'd been left out of so many missions before just because he couldn't morph. Had to sit on the sidelines and watch as his friends risked their lives again and again. While he was safe from harm's way.
It would work, wouldn't it? It should be so simple. Just a reversing of what he had done. A going back.
He could morph again. He wasn't going to be useless anymore. He wouldn't be left out anymore.
Tobias focused, closing his weak human eyes and looking inward to a completely different body. Wings that opened in gentle breezes, feathers that shifted and balanced him. Sharp, callused talons that gripped-
Slowly, he changed. He became himself- the bird.
He beat his wings against the ground, finding purchase in the air beneath him. Lifting slowly into the sky, the heavens.
Tobias flew, and felt instantly at ease.
He had only been without wings for a few minutes, but his heart still beat extra hard just at the thought of it, the memory. The others were used to being in different bodies, but Tobias wasn't. He had only the one.
But which one is mine? Tobias muttered to himself.
And was ashamed at the thought.
(Useless.)
((I'll do it,)) Tobias said to the group, his only friends.
No one spoke for almost a good thirty seconds, the forest seeming to echo with their silence. Distant sounds of the Yeerks searching growing nearer quickly.
They all stared, stared with wolf eyes and bear eyes and tiger eyes and all four Andalite eyes. Trying to decide if he was crazy. If he had lost it from all the waiting, from all the watching sheltered in the sidelines.
All the not-knowing if they were alive or dead. All their screams in his ears as they lived through life-or-death situations and he just watched.
((You will?)) Rachel asked carefully, almost quietly. ((.. You will?))
((Yeah,)) Tobias willed his mental voice to be steady. ((I'll do it. I'll morph Ket. I'll morph a Hork-Bajir.))
Something seemed to click inside Rachel, because then she said, ((The Ellimist? That's what he did for you? I thought he was going to make you human again.)) There was an edge of anger in her tone. Of outrage.
((I am.)) Tobias interrupted, softly.
Dull chop-chop-chop's of the searching helicopters thudded distantly through the canopy. Tobias ruffled his feathers almost subconciously in his friends' silence. ((You .. you should probably look away. I don't really - that is, to say..))
Tobias could almost taste his awkwardness, but, thankfully - luckily - Cassie understood him. Interrupting with a belated, ((Oh! Right. You've - no clothes, right. We'll .. just go over here.)) She, making an example, leading them, turned and padded her way softly out of the small clearing and further into the woods.
Jake and Marco, shaking themselves into awareness and slowly following after. Ax's hooves making soft, muted impacts against the forest floor.
Rachel grinning at him with her razor-sharp bear teeth. His hawk's eyesight automatically narrowing in on a sight he could still see in the dimming light.
A member of the team again. He could morph. He could fly. He could be human.
Tobias landed behind the Hork-Bajir and told them to stand still and face forward, away from him. Not to look behind them at all.
And, standing so still, so motionless they could be statues, Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak followed his instructions to the letter.
Tobias could hear his friends' thought-speak as he shifted back to human. The process still strange and unfamiliar to him. The body still foreign.
He could hear Jake telling the others Tobias' plan, could hear them still including him even though they couldn't see him. No time for anger, no time for pity.
Tobias got what he wanted, what he wanted all along.
Didn't he?
He placed a soft, fleshy hand against Ket's back. The skin rough and scaley, almost snake-like, as he aquired the Hork-Bajir. Hurrying in his faint shame, his naked human body.
The heavy beat of the helicopters closing in, all around him. Thudding, rattling through the treetops and vibrating faintly against the delicate skin protecting his feet. Ankles and shin bone.
((Hey, Tobias,)) Marco said later, as they walked back into the clearing, ready. ((You kept the same feet.))
The Visser's laughter echoed through their heads, cruel, malicious, as Tobias hunched in his stolen Hork-Bajir body against the back wall of the cave, against Rachel's stolen Hork-Bajir body.
((Fools,)) Visser Three sneered. ((No one escapes the Yeerk empire. Certainly not a pair of idiot Hork-Bajir. Look at them down there, all of you! That's what awaits anyone who tries to escape the Yeerks!))
He laughed a terrible laugh. ((The wolves will give them both the burial they deserve.))
Tobias could hear Rachel's hearts beating, thudding erraticaly and foreignly next to him. Her thick, scaley skin strange against his own as he pressed against her in the narrow opening.
Marco in front of them, between them both, all of them squeezed into the cave. The soft and yet callused skin of the gorilla feeling alien from under the hard Hork-Bajir flesh. Like a cat's paw, Tobias thought, distractedly. Thinking vaguely of Dude, his cat, when he had not for months.
Both of them, Rachel and Tobias, carefully keeping their Hork-Bajir blades away from Marco's vulerable flesh. Marco's almost-human skin. While above them the sounds of Visser Three and the rest of the Yeerks slowly began to disperse. To leave.
Soft, muted hooves. Thudding, weak human feet in boots and padded shoes. Scrapping claws. Sliding, dragging bodies.
Until silence.
Carefully they crawled back up. Cassie and Jake and Ax guiding Jara and Ket back to the lip of the ravine. Marco leading the way from the cave, lifting Tobias, and then Rachel up and over.
Rachel and Cassie and Jake and Marco and Ax all morphing back in plain sight while Tobias waited, lingered. So comfortable in his Hork-Bajir body, so like and unlike the red-tailed hawk's minature form.
So completely unlike the fleshy, clumbersome human.
Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak standing beside them, watching them. The smoke still heavy in the air all around them. Almost burning, itself.
In the new valley of the Hork-Bajir, everyone lingered. Everyone stayed, for a little while, before leaving. Going home, back to warm beds and waiting parents.
((Tobias,)) Jake said privately to Tobias as he took off. ((.. You could stay with me, at my house. Anytime. As long as you want.))
Ax telling Tobias how long he had been morphed before taking off himself.
All of them gone but Tobias, still in bird form, and the two Hork-Bajir. Tobias, counting down the minutes as the sun rose lethargically in the sky and he drifted lazily in the building gold above them, helping them survey their new home.
Watching every new burst of light with a frantic, and yet relieved, heart. Unsure, almost.
This was what he wanted. Human.
Bird?
Tobias swept in and out of caves between the breezes, at the edge of the valley, explaining that this would be Jara and Ket's new home forever. That they could never leave. Not until all the Yeerks were gone from the Earth.
Not until they were free.
Riding on the growing thermals, he slowly gained altitude. Beating his wings into a rhythm with a familiar light, building ache. Catching the rising warm air, circling, and still counting.
He pitched his meagar - nimble - bird body over the vanishing edge of the valley, vanishing even as he moved away from it, and headed home.
Home. His territory. His meadow with the tall tree and nice grass full of plump juicy mice.
No. His home, on the edge of town with the broken streetlight and the gang who waited behind the nearby gas station. His home, with the old, lumpy mattress that sagged in the middle on his bed. Still covered with dinosaur bed-sheets. A cat litterbox in the corner of his room.
Worn, used books lining the shelves, scattered over the floor. His human room. His human life.
His meadow, as he flew over it, was dark still. A dark that seemed all the more omnious for the absence. Absence of light, shadows casting long about the part-acre. Absence of him resting on the comfortable perch, watching over all of it.
He circled twice around his meadow, slowly.
Home. His uncle on the stained couch, smelling of beer. The bullies dunking his head in the toliet. Ripping his backpack off of him and laughing. His aunt, on the phone, smelling of perfume so rich and so remotely foreign and devoid of love.
The Hork-Bajir had their Eden. The others all had their homes. He had his meadow. No. His home, his bedroom with the window that wouldn't shut all the way.
His cat, Dude, who was probably still waiting for him. Sleeping on the bed, keeping the sheets warm.
Waiting.
Like he had, outside Chapman's home. Like he had as all his friends turned into ants and began screaming, screaming like they were dying. Like he had as they slipped into the silvery skin of fishes and swam beneath a Yeerk ship while he floated in the meager space between, unknown to them, unable to protect them, to help.
Tobias landed in the shadow of his favorite tree, and demorphed to human.
Taking his time, Tobias draws slow loops over the city, scouting out his old neighborhood. By the time he's remembered the old old landmarks from the air - the coin laundrymat at the corner, the convenience store with the yellow sign welcoming all runaways, the used car dealership - it's fully morning.
The sun is risen enough to have lost all it's earlier fabulously waterpainted golds and oranges and deep reds which had mingled thickly about the sky, but were now gone. Gone, gone, with only spreading white-grey fog settling the town.
The deep morning mist paints the city, and Tobias rises above and beneath it, dodging and circling. Playing. Endless blue stretching over, thick white smoking under as far as he could see.
It feels like almost a half hour has passed, and Tobias drops beneath the white to know for sure, skirting abruptly in haste around the unfriendly branches of a big tree which leams out at him from the smog.
He banks a hard left, and finds his goal. A neon sign attached to the side of a local bank, faded in this light, with large yellow letters calling the time.
Lifting back up, he turns to a hazy cluster of houses, and finds it's not his neighborhood at all.
Swearing, Tobias barrelrolls away from the buildings and starts heading back to the last familiar landmark.
Carefully, he alights on the half-open windowsill, closing his wings with a scant flutter and barely avoiding smaking his head in the glass. Inside, Tobias can see his room and suddenly finds that he recognizes two of the books on the nightstand.
A sense of almost-comfort combats his nervousness as Tobias hops under the pane with minimal squeezing.
The sudden presence of so much familiarity - his parents in their frame looking almost absently at him - makes him hesitate, until Tobias almost misses the faint sounds beneath his bed. A flash of fur brushes out from under the sheets as Dude walks beneath.
((Oh. Right.)) Tobias says softly to himself, moving to perch on the bed as he begins the change back to humanity.
Startled at the noise of bending bones, Dude darts out in a grey streak. Hisses, and jumps on the dresser across from Tobias. Tail puffed up and claws extended.
"It's alright, Dude," Tobias coos softly, reaching for his cat.
A yowl, a quick hiss, and Tobias' left wrist is bloody, with Dude making a springboard of the bed to sail through the open window and out.
Pinching the cut closed with his other hand, Tobias watches where his oldest friend has gone in a sort of delayed reaction. Standing, still naked.
I can never belong to you.
- Boat Behind, by Kings of Convenience
Waking with a start, Tobias rolls out of his bed, and ends up wrapping himself into a knot of blankets and sheets, and falls on the floor with a padded thump.
Sweat making the fabric cling to him like glue, Tobias frantically struggles to free himself before realizing the lack of a shout from the living room, the lack of any other voice at all.
The late afternoon sun cast drifting shadows as Tobias shuffled down the sidewalk, eyes glued to the strange contraptions tied to his feet. Shoes. How awkward. They felt like a rubber and cloth version of weights, pulling him down.
Tying him to the earth.
He tripped again, over a wide crack in the ground, and flung his arms out quickly in learned instinct to fly. The quick back and forth motion shifted his balance back, but earth-bound he stayed.
"Tobias!"
He looked up in time to see Rachel running towards him, and flung his arms out again, but it wasn't enough before she was on him, grabbing him around the middle and hugging him until his ribs cracked.
And down he went, backwards, thrown off-balance by her sudden weight.
"Tobias, we were looking all over for you! You weren't at your meadow. Where were you?" Rachel asked, covering up the sound of his body hitting the ground with her words.
"I went .. I was at my uncle's." He said, listening to her unsaid, 'Oh'. The unspoken realization that they never expected him to ever go back.
With Rachel pulling him along, still going on and on. "And now that you're finally human again you can go to the movies and - oh! You'll like this one, Tobias. I swear, it's just your sort of thing."
Rachel having to release Tobias' hand to pay the attendent, smiling at him as she talked until Tobias said, belated, "Oh. Um, thank you." A little uncertain but warm enough.
And Tobias looking at the two-story brick building with no windows beyond the glass doors leading inwards, showing walls and walls and walls. Ceilings where the sky should be, people clustered around the concession stand, chattering away and bumping into each other.
Quietly touching his hand, grabbing him again and holding tight, squeezing as she said, "Are you alright? We can go somewhere else if you want, Tobias."
"Oh no," Tobias said. Shaking himself and smiling back at her. "It sounds like fun. Let's go."
And Rachel laughing at him as she lead them inside. Tobias' shoulders stiffening unconciously as the doors banged shut behind him. Locked him in.
The dark dark world all around him and sweat, the smell of humans lingering everywhere he went. People shoving around him and through him as Rachel cut a path to their theater.
Tobias starting quickly from each noise as they looked for a seat, eyes darting to the red lights dotting a runway out the way he came in, the bright sign over the doors at either side of the screen. The projection booth above him with that echoing white light.
Rachel holding onto him and moving him to an empty row.
Pulling him down to earth.
Tobias fluttered down and landed on the broken streetlamp across from his uncle's house. Seeing the windows within were still lit. Making sure the coast was clear before he swooped into the alley nearby.
Before he demorphed, shedding his hawk skin, his raptor's life, to don a weak and fragile soft fleshy one. Missing his feathers even as they were disappearing, erasing tattoos from his skin.
But, not really. Not really gone.
Pulling on the extra set of clothes he had left in a bag earlier that day with clumsy fingers unused to being worked. Expressionless eyes that didn't blink.
A face that didn't change at all.
Looking left and right, he stumbled out of the alley. Darting ungainly across the street before traffic could start anew. Walked up, this time, to the front door.
Turned the knob, already unlocked, and opened it, swinging the door wide.
His uncle, sitting on the couch with the light from the tv flickering across the older man's face, a cigar in his mouth. Staring at Tobias with narrowed eyes.
"So, you're home."
And Tobias, master of it, unconciously staring back.
All the way across town, a solemn faced Paul DeGroot with a week's worth of bags under his eyes opens his office door, carefully balancing his coffee and his briefcase with one hand as he turns the knob with his other.
And, at her desk, early as usual, is Ingrid the secretary. Her graying hair tight in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her hands shuffling through his appointment book, marking on it.
Her voice saying that he looked tired, worn. That her sister had joined this organization, that it really seemed to cheer her up. That maybe he might like to try it out later, you never know after all, sir.
And he, drinking his coffee like he has been a starving man in the desert, barely keeping his grip on his briefcase, and thinking.
"Maybe," DeGroot says. Remembering his father. Remembering back when he himself was only at knee's height and watching his father leave from the house early every morning, come home at the same time every night. Never too tired to play with his son, never too worn out at all.
And Paul feels like he's going to drop, as if he's dead weight barely held on by a string, and he wonders.
How did the old man do it all on his own?
Jake drops his bookbag at the base of Tobias' favorite tree, so easy to find him here. And asks, "Are you ready?" to the boy sitting perched, human, at the top of it.
How in the world Tobias managed to climb all the way up that broken old thing..
And Tobias answering. Tobias jumping down from it and falling on his hands and knees in the process, not graceful at all. Tobias still not in school, still not sitting in the back row of class, drawing on his homework. Tobias not looking up slowly, blushing, almost in worship as Jake looks.
Hero Jake. Jake who worries, who can't help worrying. Jake pulling some extra clothes out from his bag, clothes that haven't fit for years, probably had never fit, he thinks idly.
"I hear you and Rachel had a date," Jake says politely as Tobias stares at the bundle of fabric. Jake recalling a Tobias that usually came late to school, sitting through classes in adult-sized clothes. Clothes that were baggy, too big, and hung off of the boy's gangly frame.
Such clothes that the boy was wearing now; a jacket that could have wrapped around Tobias, a gray wife-beater shirt that hung too low on his chest. Sagging pants.
Tobias stares.
"Uh. Yeah," he says belatedly, thinking back. "We saw a movie."
"How was it?" Jake asks politely, handing Tobias a shirt and pair of shorts that looked like they might fit, might be tight enough to loose his human skin with and yet keep his human clothes.
Jake looking away from Tobias as he changes, tries on the charity. Waits for Tobias to answer.
Tobias slips the shirt over his head. Pulls it taunt against his chest, fisting the extra fabric into a bundle. "Um. It was, .. okay I guess," he says, thinking back. Not really remembering at all.
"I don't think this is going to work," Tobias says, tugging at his shirt. "It's just not tight enough."
".. Try it anyways," Jake suggests, already looking through what he has for something smaller. For something better.
And Tobias begins to morph, to grow fur and slitted eyes as he turns into his missing cat. His first friend. Jake's borrowed clothes falling off of him as his spine compresses.
There is just enough light left to see with, and Jake is standing in front of a slowly emerging human Tobias.
A human Tobias standing naked in bird Tobias' meadow, bending down to pick up the outfit. To give it back. Feeling more exposed than he should, naked without his feathers.
Who Jake is looking pointedly anywhere but at as he pulls out the smallest shirt he owns.
"Try this on," Jake says, not intending it as an order as he hands Tobias the next bundle of clothing.
But Tobias obeying, taking the outfit slowly, carefully. Slipping into it and growing feathers, shrinking. Glancing at Jake just once with an expressionless face that does not change as he reaches hawk.
"How long has he been up there?" Rachel asks, worried, staring up at the heavens as the faintest glimmer of a speck in the sky which is Tobias does long, slow loops miles above the barn. Above them.
Cassie shrugs, "He was there when I came out here to feed the horses." Wiping poop off the front of her overalls with a paper towel and throwing it away.
Rachel giving her a dirty look as she waves both arms at Tobias, calling him down without words.
Knowing no words could reach him. Knowing just how far the hawk's vision lay.
Marco, sitting on the hay, his bookbag thrown beside him. Saying, "Not that I don't totally support playing hooky on a Friday - or any day really - but when are you coming back to school, Tobias?"
Tobias landing on a barrel of hay, catching his talons in the twine, and demorphing.
Marco noticing, and calling out, "Hey. Aren't those your old clothes, Jake?" to the taller teen just now coming through the barn doors.
Jake, who stops, startled, in the entrance way, with nothing to say.
Marco saying, the fourth time it happened, "If he stays up there any longer, he won't ever have to worry about not doing homework again."
And Cassie is running a brush over the back of a deeply brown coated mare. Pulling clumps of hair from the comb, tugging it through the hide as she says, "Maybe.
Maybe a ground-based morph would be good for you, Tobias." Looking to the rows of cages.
Saying, "A rancher caught this mountain lion in his fence yesterday," pointing at the drugged up animal sleeping in it's pen. Saying, "When you're not needed in the air, you know."
Continuing on, in her way. Saying how much help he's been in the sky, but telling him, and not telling him, that he needs teeth and claws. That he needs to walk.
You can join us on earth.
Waking up in the middle of the night at the faintest sound of scratching, of mews and hisses. Sounds which, in his hawk's body, would have been deafening to Tobias.
Untangling himself from the sheets. Sitting up and sticking his head out the window, listening. Looking. Looking for Dude.
The night as haunting and encompassing as ever. Vague outlines of houses, buildings, silhouetting. Pure, pure black with blurred pinpricks of white light dotting the sky.
Half as many as he was used to. Half as bright as he remembered.
Rachel taking him to the mall.
Glaring at him with hands on her hips when Tobias stops, pulls back. When Tobias stares in daunting at the tall building. The crowds of people jostling.
Yelling at him, scolding him with energy built up from weeks of inactivity. Of quiet life and no battles, no blood or warring and second chances. No last minute escapes.
Grabbing his shirt, knotting it through her fist as she pulls him, yells at him.
As she drags him along. Pent up and angry. His quiet, nonverbal opposition tearing through her veins like an argument. A taunting that she must counter.
Tobias, sitting perched in a tree against knobby branches, with black black fur that hides him in the cool midnight air. Hides him in plain sight.
Listening to the shifting of his friends below, even as he looks. Even now, through the underbrush with his new night vision, for that faintest glimpse of gray.
Of Dude's tail, that swung back and forth as he walked. Looking for Dude's white chin and pale belly which lay, exposed, as the cat curled up on his back next to Tobias, purring. Comforting.
Sleeping next to him on warm humid nights. Slipping under his covers and pressing warm, soft fur against his back. Kneeding him with padded paws.
A larger feline, nestled comfortably in bark and bramble, scouting out the smaller. For days he looks. Even now, waiting on the forefront of a battle, he looks.
Swishing his long dark tail as Tobias watches the great expanse of darkness.
Thinking, "Where are you?"
"Over time, you'll forget. You'll forget you ever were something else entirely, someone else." Paul DeGroot says to his secretary, dictating.
Stops, to think what should come next. Glances at his desk, at the yellow sheet with thick black lettering for the Sharing. Holds it between thumb and forefinger, considering.
Remembering his father's weathered, determined face. Remembers sitting under this desk, his father's desk. In this room, this building his father worked in for years. Watching the man write, research, bear through it all, all on his own.
Watched him be strong, alone.
The words flit through his head. The right thing to say, to do..
The son starts, then says, "No." Crumples up the paper and throws it away. Wears his father's face unknowingly for a second as he scrowls at the paperwork.
"There is no hiding the truth," he mutters, going over it all again in his head. Trying to find the right words, the right thing to say. Pulling out another large cardboard box from the stack next to him on the floor.
Rummaging through it as he thinks.
Taking out a strange, dated letter in his father's handwriting. Pausing in his musing to look at it and read the contents, muttering softly to himself.
Eyes going wide, his face in disbelief as he crumples that too, and throws it away. Aliens. Nonsense.
Trapped, trapped, the walls closing in on him, rushing at him, squeezing him into the dark abyss, burying him.
Tobias is standing in the corridor to the school, just before the administration office, where a middle-aged woman with streaks is talking on the phone.
School. A human life. A soft bed sheltered from the rain. Warm golden light and a TV and couches and beds and tables. Food that came in boxes and cans.
Books and magazines. Games. Stuff.
Walls, he thinks frantically. Walls and ceilings and dark corners and corridors like being underground. Tunnels. Dirt piling up on him, entombing him, no air no sky no light.
Cars and crowds. The noise, the rush, the weight of it all, the feeling of being made of lead, tied down.
He gasps for air, tries to surface, tries to breath, eyes darting around, looking for escape. Frantic, hurried, his heart thudding in his chest so hard he has to grab onto it just to keep it from falling out.
Turns and runs to where the sky is waiting for him. Where the sun is hanging high and bright.
The sky has never let him down before.
"Human," Rachel pleads with him. "You're human. Be human."