Disclaimer: KAA owns Animorphs. Anything not recognizable as hers is probably mine, unless otherwise stated.
Of course she'd be the first one to remember; she was the first one to die, after all. Still, she thinks, ten years old is a little young to be remembering what you did during an entire war.
She's lying on her bed and the house is quiet. Her younger sisters are fast asleep and her mother is out working late again. It's weird for her to realize that she doesn't have to worry about Yeerks, Visser Three, Controllers, or any part of the war yet because, even if they are here, at this point in time, there's nothing she can do about it. Besides, it would be beyond stupid and insane to try anything when she can't even morph.
The only other thing she really needs to do is give her cousin and her semi-boyfriend a piece of her mind. But the next time she sees Jake, he looks at her with innocent, childlike eyes and she realizes that he isn't the same Jake who'd essentially sent her to her death. And she's unsettled by that, along with the fact that she doesn't even know whether Tobias is living in her city yet. She's glad Cassie's still there for her, though, even if she feels absolutely terrible about not being able to tell her about this.
Eventually, she gets used to it, and it never really feels right, but at least she's alive. In three years, history might just repeat itself and she would take this second chance with both hands.
Something else was wrong here.
A little voice in the back of his mind is shouting it as loud as it possibly can, but everything is wrong right now because his mom's gone and she's not coming back and he'll never see her again and they never even found her body. He sits numbly next to his weeping father and the priest's words make no imprint on his mind. How was the world still turning when his world had stopped? How could the sun still rise every day when his mom wouldn't be there to see it with him and his dad? And even though his dad is weeping and bawling and crying his eyes out, he sits silently with his face dry and his eyes glazed because this can't be happening.
And that screaming part is refusing to believe that his mom is dead, absolutely dead-set against accepting it and he doesn't know why.
He turns around to see who showed up to the funeral and a boy three rows back catches his attention. There is nothing special about the other boy, though he looks angry instead of sad, but he can't help feeling that the other boy is familiar somehow, as though they know each other from somewhere, but he's forgotten. He doesn't spend long thinking about it, though, (because his mom is gonegonegone) but he files it away to look at later.
When everything's just the tiniest bit better. And he ignores the feeling he has that things won't be better for a long time.
He is missing something, he's sure of it.
But he doesn't know what it is. He is in the wrong city, but he doesn't know why he's so sure of that. He knows his mother is out there somewhere, but he doesn't know where she is or why he's so sure. He knows his father is unusual, but he doesn't know how he is or how he knows. And he has a feeling that he's had friends before, though he can never remember who they are.
It's a little frustrating to know that you know things about yourself, but not to know how you know or who told you or even what exactly you know. All he has to go on is feelings and that isn't helping him much at the moment. It doesn't explain how he knows he's strong, that he has suffered and pulled through, that he is the one who lets the bullies push him around.
And it doesn't explain his dreams of flying, of catching thermals and rising up, up, up in the sky and still being able to see the newspapers down below. It doesn't explain the flashes of blue fur and almond-shaped eyes that dance elusively through the fog of his mind or the bursts of emotion that explode in response to vaguely familiar names.
All he knows is that he is missing his wings and his next trip to his uncle's will provide all the answers he needs.
The sudden return surprises her.
She opens her eyes and looks around the room, recognizing it as hers and yet…not. It is her room of years ago, before the war, before losing all of her friends, before she forces herself to move on and not think about what could have (should have) been. But it is also her room now, the only room she's ever known or had and she could find everything in it in a heartbeat.
Confused, she racks her brain, trying to remember the last thing to happen to her, and she gets two different memories in response. The first is her bedroom and Erek and her last request before she drifts away with her final thoughts on all of her lost friends, having already said good-bye to everyone else who came after. The second is school and Rachel and going to bed on a Friday night, having completed all her homework and looking forward to spending a day at The Gardens with her mom.
But that can't be right, she thinks. Her mom has been dead for years and Rachel for even longer. Education, in any form, is a distant memory. And she's definitely out of practice because it takes her a while to remember the higher beings who had once meddled in her life.
Yet, she gets the feeling that they're not the ones responsible for this particular incident, and she'd learned during the war to listen to her gut feelings, so she trawls through whatever memories she has to try to find the one responsible. There's a fuzzy memory of a meeting between a group of people and one immensely powerful being, but it slips away before she can do much more with it.
Either way, she's more than ready to begin what must be her second chance. Especially if she can see all the Animorphs again.
In the back of his mind, there's something he doesn't want to remember.
He has no idea what it is or why he constantly shies away from it, but he knows he doesn't want to remember. He has the feeling that if he remembers, his world will fall apart and that's something he doesn't ever want to happen.
His cousin is part of it, though; this he knows. He remembers that time a year or two ago, when she came up to him with an emotion in her eyes that he's never seen before, only to pause in confusion. A moment later, the emotion is gone and she is back to being his cousin, yet there is this…weight about her that he feels he should have recognized.
And he knows, knows that The Sharing is somehow involved. A chill always travels up and down his spine whenever he hears the name, and an ominous shiver had gone through him when Tom started attending the gatherings. He had felt sick, all the way to his soul, when he realized Tom was spending more and more time with that stupid group and that something in the back of his mind started pointing out every un-Tom-like thing his brother did.
But, no matter how much he doesn't want to remember whatever that something is, his gut is saying that all the answers he needs is in that forgotten, closed-up area. So, he'll try to remember what he doesn't want to. For his brother's sake, if nothing else.
He tries to ignore it, but it doesn't go away.
He knows he has never left the homeworld before. He had always been too young, not experienced enough, not old enough, not even an aristh, and the comments irritated him, but he had tried not to show it. It never fooled his brother, though, and he is the only one he tells about his problems because he is never treated as an ignorant child when he is around his older brother. So, he is the only one who knows of the odd dreams he has been having.
Besides, there is something terrifyingly familiar about the others in his dreams, though he knows he has never met them before. Sometimes there are three four-legged alien creatures of differing colors (Prince Jake, Rachel, Cassie), an odd bird with only one pair of wings (Tobias), and a creature that appears able to maneuver on either four limbs or two limbs (Marco) fighting Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, and the Abomination. Other times, there are four alien individuals that walk on only two legs and communicate using mouth-sounds and the distant tingle of an unknown sense (humans).
His brother only smiles mysteriously at him afterwards and says ((When the time comes, you will know all you need to know, Aximili. Trust me.)) And he nods in agreement, uncomprehendingly, but he has a feeling that he will understand all too soon.
A/N: It's been a while since I've been in this fandom, but I recently got my hands on all of the Animorphs books, so I came back to browse. The result? This idea.
Anyway, I'm just posting this out there to see if I get any interest before I decide whether to continue and I'm at a bit of a block with my other story, so...yeah.
Enjoy~