Mistakes and Miracles
Author's note: I don't own the Animorphs; if I did, I'd be a better writer.
You didn't mean to fall in love with him. It wasn't like Jake and Cassie where everything was written out in the stars from the beginning; it wasn't an "oh, finally" moment from Macro. It was just…life.
You're not even sure of the first time you saw him, whether it was in the hallway or on the bus or some other place. To be perfectly honest, you never would have cared. He was one of those people who always managed to slide easily into the background, to disappear into himself. You were the opposite, a person who always seemed to have a spotlight shining on her. You always thought you were better than that and that you could see beyond the bright glare of your own beauty. Cassie seemed to be living proof of that. Looking back, though, it hits you just how blind you really were that you couldn't even see the boy who would carry your heart away.
You remember flying with him. He liked to tell you everything, to point out all the secrets of the forest and the intricacies of the sky. You listened. But sometimes out of the corner of your eagle-sharp eye, you would see him and realize that you were seeing a hawk instead of a human. And all the sudden, you didn't care about thermals anymore.
You remember talking to him. You liked to tell him everything about humans, to trace out his future, and promise him everything would be okay. Even when he got mad and flew off in the night, you benefited. You hated him flying away from you, reminding you that he was in fact a bird. It would fill you with such anger that you would vow to fight another day just for the slightest chance that it would bring about something that would make him human again. By the end of the war, you stopped fighting for mankind and started fighting for solely him.
On that last day, he made you go. Not by words, for even a Tobias hardened by war was too gentle for that, but by guilt. As you prepared to leave on your final mention, all you could think about was all those nameless, faceless bully magnets you passed in the hallways and wondered if one of them might have been him. You could have stopped them and saved him from one beating, but you didn't. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you wonder if you could have given a memory good enough to make him decide to be human again.
So this is like an overdue payment for you, a sacrifice to make up for all the ones you never made before. It's not about the Yeerks anymore; it's just about him. It's the ultimate "I'm sorry," and you're not even expecting anything in return. And when you see him for the last time and realize that he is in human form, it is an unexpected surprise. Kind of like being an Animorph. Kind of like loving him.