Title: touch the ground and climb to the sky
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: future!fic
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 165
Point of view: third
Prompt: Animorphs, Rachel, the well intentioned, lost girl behind the tragic heroine no one really remembers any more (post series)
Of them all, Rachel has the most legends. She's remembered as bloodthirsty, as dangerous, as beautiful, as the sacrifice who won the war, as a hero who never thought twice about doing her duty and doing it with style.
Of course, what very few people remember is that all the legends are true.
And what even fewer people remember, because so very few ever knew, is that Rachel was once a little blonde girl who dragged her mother from one store to another, who tumbled and cartwheeled, who taught her baby sisters to dance.
She's known the world over as a warrior. People on other planets know her name, know how her story ended. Barely anyone remembers that she was just a little girl, once.
Cassie almost names her first daughter Rachel. She closes her eyes, gently holds her baby to her breast, and remembers that golden-haired, bright-eyed girl who promised that, together, they'd change the world.
She names her daughter Hope instead.