Author: Miko Maleficus
Title: The Lost
Rating: K
Genre: Romance
Word Count: 690
Summary: The impact, and then nothingness. Silence, and then a presence. – takes place after "The Beginning." Fluff.
Disclaimer: Animorphs and everything that might in any way possibly relate to it belong to Scholastic and K. A. Applegate. I'm just playing. The first quote is from Megamorphs #1: The Andalite's Gift, and the second is from #54: The Beginning. The last…well, it's everywhere.
Author's Note: This was written in a fit of inspiration at approximately five-thirty in the morning. This was written in a fit of inspiration at approximately five-thirty in the morning. My own little memorial, six years after the fact. I felt it deserved one. Also, I will fully admit that I'm a sucker for fluff and happy endings, and I couldn't bear to let characters I love so much hang in limbo like that. I hope I did them some measure of justice. I know it's short. It's meant to be.
I fully realise that I am a total loser. But I enjoy it. Also, I have gathered from browsing some of the other Animorphs fics on the site that the common practice is to replace the thought-speak HTML-style brackets with parentheses; someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.
Please forgive any discrepancies in the 'plot.' It's been awhile since I read most of the books, and my memory of some of the more minute details is a bit shaky. That said, enjoy. Reviews and especially constructive criticism are always encouraged.
:x:x:x:
Then, to my total amazement, she began to sing the deep, strange, haunting song of the humpback. The sound waves thrilled me, I don't quite know why.
(What are you singing?) Jake asked her. (What are the words?)
(It isn't words, exactly,) Cassie said. (But if it were, it would be just one word: hope.)
:x:x:x:
"What was it, Marco? 'Crazy, reckless, ruthless decisions'?"
I nodded, wishing I had kept my mouth shut.
There was a dangerous smile on Jake's face.
Rachel's smile.
"Full emergency power to the engines," Jake said. "Ram the Blade ship."
:x:x:x:
There was a horrendous screeching noise. It was like nothing else I had ever heard. Like a thousand car wrecks, all happening at the same time.
White light lit up the world.
Then there was nothing.
The nothingness lasted for what felt like seconds but might have been years. Stranger things have happened. I've seen them.
Then the nothingness changed. It wasn't that there was something there, more that there was an absence of nothing. Which doesn't make any sense. It's not something I can describe; I just sensed the alteration in the space around me, and for the first time it occurred to me to wonder what had happened, and where I was.
The first thought to filter into my mind was that I was standing on some kind of surface. It wasn't visible, but it was there. Then I realised that the reason I could feel said surface was that I was human. I was human, and barefoot, and wearing my morphing suit.
But that wasn't right, either. I wasn't human. I was some strange combination of man and bird. There were wings on my back and feathers in my hair, and my eyesight seemed sharper than it should have been.
I told myself that it was a dream. I'd had it a million times before. All that it needed now was –
Rachel.
She was there, suddenly, standing off to my right. Not facing me, but looking off into the blank white distance. She was in her black leotard, and her feet, too, were bare.
(Rachel.)
So apparently even here I had no voice. It was appropriate, somehow. Sound probably couldn't travel in this place, anyway.
She spun around, hair whipping out behind her.
(Tobias!) She took a single hesitant step toward me. (Tobias, is that really you?)
(Rachel…) I couldn't move; I had forgotten how. All I could do was say her name, utterly disbelieving that she was really there. She looked just as she had that day we – I – had lost her: sixteen, blonde and beautiful, determination and sadness and passion in her eyes.
She smiled brilliantly at me, and closed the distance between us with a few quick steps. (It is you,) she said. A single hand lifted and hovered next to my cheek. (How did you get here?)
(I don't…I don't know,) I said, finding words again. (The last thing I remember is—)
"Ram the Blade ship."
Searing pain.
And then, blankness.
(I'm dead, aren't I?) I asked rhetorically.
She shrugged. (I guess.) She cocked her head to the side, looked up at me. (How long has it been?)
(Three years.)
(That long…)
There was a silence of indeterminate length. (What do you remember?) I asked finally.
(Jake. Tom. The polar bear.) A brief pause. (You.)
(Rachel…) I said again. She took the initiative I couldn't and stepped forward to put her arms around me. I wrapped my own around her and pulled her close, resting my head atop hers and closing my eyes. (It's been so long,) I said softly.
(Yes.)
For what could have easily been years we stood and held each other. But again my sense of time skewed, and it could also have only been a minute or two before she said, (Do you know what happened to the others?)
(I assume they're…dead…too,) I told her. I grinned wryly. (We went down together.)
(Of course.) I felt her lift her head from my chest and look up at me. (Tobias?)
I opened my eyes and looked back at her. God, she had beautiful eyes. (Yeah.)
(I missed you,) she said, and then before I really knew what was happening, she was kissing me and I was kissing her back and there was nothing to interrupt us.
Eventually, I would tell her the whole story, all that had happened between her death and mine. She would tell me the thoughts that had run through her mind in those last moments before her world faded. And we would both puzzle over my admittedly very bizarre appearance.
But for now, it was enough that we had been allowed to find each other.
:x:x:x:
For the Animorphs, especially Tobias and Rachel.
(Together we fight.)