Note: I wasn't entirely satisfied with this chapter, so I was holding onto it for a little bit, just to see if I could tweak it a bit more. Sorry about that, guys.
After this, we'll probably be seeing some of Jake. I'd also like to spend some time on interactions between Tobias and Loren.
It might take me a bit to get to Ax- I love him, but I'm not sure how to write him.
/Rachel?/ In the end, she doesn't find him. He finds her. /What are you doing?/
/Flying./ Rachel has no reason to be short with him. But after her loss of control the night before, she's feeling shaken. Snappish.
She doesn't apologize, but her explanation when it comes is as soft as she can make it. /I couldn't stand to be cooped up any longer./
If anyone could understand the feeling, it would be Tobias.
Tobias' laugh resounds in her head. /Can't blame you for that./
/So, what are you up to?/
/Hunting./
/Oh. Right. Sorry./
/Don't be./ Tobias keeps his tone light, but, at this point, it feels like any attempt at being lighthearted is just that: an attempt. /I caught a mouse earlier. I'm fed./
Out of habit, they keep apart. Now that they no longer have to worry about curious eyes on the ground, there's no need for them to maintain the distance.
Looks like old habits really do die hard. Especially when said old habit was part of the reason they stayed alive as long as they did. Not to mention Tobias' hawk instincts. He wouldn't want anything to do with her eagle. So they kept their distance.
For the time being.
At some point, their direction becomes clear, but neither one of them comments on it.
Until...
/Holy.../
At the same time, Tobias breathes, /Wow./
Their hometown is in ashes.
The sight shouldn't come as a surprise- they had only just managed to evacuate when the Yeerks struck in force.
It still feels like the air has been forcibly vacuumed from her lungs.
Melissa.
It occurs to Rachel that she has no idea if Melissa made it out alive. If her parents had.
She feels vaguely guilty for not checking, but that fades in the background to… everything else.
/The crater.../ Tobias whispers. /Wow./
The crater where the high school once stood is huge.
A gaping and raw wound in the earth itself.
The Yeerks are defeated. Visser One is imprisoned. The majority have chosen to live out the rest of their lives as nothlits. There are even still a few that exist with their voluntary hosts.
Rachel doesn't understand it, how anyone could still be willing to give up their freedom, but regardless, the Yeerk threat to earth is over.
But the crater is the reminder. A reminder to how close they came to losing everything. Of how far they had to go to win.
Years from now, she thinks maybe the crater will serve as a sort of monument, a testament to humanity's spirit.
You came to defeat us and look at what we did to you.
You tried to break us and you failed.
But right now, the wound is too fresh and people are too shaken.
But they're making a comeback.
Rachel lands gracefully- she kicks a small cloud of ash up anyways- and begins to demorph. There's no reason for her to demorph here, but she does anyway.
The stillness is overwhelming and Rachel is struck by the realization that she and Tobias must be the only living things for miles.
She hasn't even seen one insect.
The Yeerks went beyond mere destruction. In Visser One's determination to keep the Animorphs from having the element of surprise, he's leveled everything to the ground.
The devastation is total. It's all burned to cinders.
Rachel is fiercely grateful that that includes the bodies of the dead. There are no charred bones lying there accusingly.
When Visser Three- no, Visser One- had finally made open war against earth, she had had one thought strike her with perfect clarity.
How have we made it this far?
And she had looked at Jake and seen the same question reflected back at her.
The understanding that had it been this way at the start, they would have been obliterated on their first trip into the Yeerk pool.
Before that even.
And they still won.
You hear that, you filthy slugs? We won.
/This was a mistake,/ Tobias says. He sounds about as shaken as she 's no tree for him to land in and so he lands in the ash beside her. Unlike her, he doesn't make the change back to human. /Why did we come here?/
The question is rhetorical and so Rachel doesn't see the point in answering.
She doesn't know the answer anyways- they just did. But seeing this- all of it- reminds her that there's a reason for her anger. That it's justified.
And that's how she wants to feel.
It occurs to her that they shouldn't be so shaken. They've seen this before. They saw it happen. The whole world did.
Maybe, if she were here, Cassie would smile sadly and say something about combat and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Cassie isn't here.
She's off being the spokesperson or ambassador for the Hork-Bajir, along with Toby Hamee. She's moving on, doing things with her life.
Important things.
Rachel wiggles her toes and feels the ash beneath her feet.
It hits her like a punch to the gut that those could be somebody.
Somebody whose family doesn't even have a body to bury.
She's seen so much carnage- and been responsible for some of it herself- that it surprises her that she should be so squeamish.
But it turns her stomach regardless.
/I wonder if my uncle made it out,/ Tobias muses quietly.
Rachel doesn't say how she feels- that it would be a small loss if he didn't make it- but her lips tighten and she knows Tobias sees it.
There isn't much the eyes of a hawk miss.
She begins the morph to eagle again.
/We should go,/ she says, when the morph is nearly complete and with it comes the ability to thought speak. She tries to hide just how rattled she is, but Tobias knows her well enough to see past that by now.
He was right. Coming here was a mistake.
But a part of her had to see it again. She wonders if Tobias feels the same way. Probably.
/Rachel?/ he asks as they fly away, putting distance between them and it. /You okay?/
/You saw the same thing I did,/ she says simply. /Are you okay?/
/No./ Tobias's tone is sheepish and a little self-deprecatingly. /I guess not./
Rachel frowns inwardly. It's something she hates- his ability to so easily put himself down.
It's something that's never left him over the course of the war, but she doesn't know how to handle it right now, so she says, /Hi kettle, meet pot./
In a better situation, maybe there would be something else she'd say. Something else she should say. But she can't delude herself into thinking that anything she could say will ever make it better.
Neither one of them is okay. That's a given.
Maybe, at some point, they will be, but that's a harsh maybe.
Tobias' laugh is more genuine this time. /Point taken./
The silence that falls over them after that is easier to bear at the start. It should be peaceful, but there's too much going on in Rachel's head.
Too many demons that won't let her go.
/My mom wants me to go home for the week,/ she blurts, just to break the silence.
Once it's out there, it feels stupid. How can she talk about her own personal bull after seeing that?
But it's mundane and it sounds normal enough.
As if either one of them can even pretend to be normal at this point. They're a pair of birds flying high in the sky in California. Neither one of them can even be the same species for more than two hours at a time.
They've left normal far behind and it happened about three years ago.
/Are you going?/ Tobias asks simply.
/No. Maybe. I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it./
Tobias doesn't say it over.
Things aren't the best between her and her mom and they haven't been… well, they haven't been since the truth came out. The knowledge that her daughter had been waging a secret war for the past three years wasn't something that Naomi Berenson had exactly taken well.
It wasn't just that.
Rachel had seen the way her mother had looked at her those times in the Hork-Bajir valley. They hadn't been as discreet as she had tried to make them.
Rachel pushes it away. Her mother's judgement and condemnation on top of everything else is not what she needs to dwell on right now.
But at least Rachel has her family. She knows them and she has for the majority of her life. She has memories with them and they with her.
The same can't be said for Tobias. He's only just found Loren again and the woman doesn't even remember him.
And his father…
She doesn't even understand how the whole thing with Elfangor even happened except that the Ellimist was involved.
Somehow.
It doesn't erase what they all saw in the construction lot. It doesn't erase what Tobias saw.
/Okay, fine. I'm going,/ she says. She feels like an idiot. But Jordan and Sara probably want to see her anyways and maybe she can convince herself that that's a reason enough to go. /Thanks for helping me work that out./
/I didn't do anything, but sure. No problem./ Tobias laughs. /But Rachel?/
/Yeah?/
/Go. Talk to your family." He pauses. /Maybe I'll, uh, go out with my mom./
/I probably sound like such a jerk talking about my own problems./
/We're dealing,/ Tobias says simply.