Five-Finger Discounts: Parisian Edition
Who: David, Cassie, Perry Dawsey, Will Parry, and YOU
What: David says screw the rules, I can morph! and goes on a thieving spree. Punctuated by disapproving wardens and oblivious Animorphs!
When: Tonight and backdated to today.
Where: Paris, France; 2020
Warnings: Pfft.
( Clearly the best course of action )
What: David says screw the rules, I can morph! and goes on a thieving spree. Punctuated by disapproving wardens and oblivious Animorphs!
When: Tonight and backdated to today.
Where: Paris, France; 2020
Warnings: Pfft.
( Clearly the best course of action )
Out of them all, it had been Cassie he'd spent the most time with - not out of choice, mind, but simply because they'd made him sleep in her barn. So when she called his name, he recognized her voice instantly. His eyes jolted open and he sat up at once, all pretence of relaxation gone. Any hope that he might be mistaken drained away when he saw the slightly taller, slightly better-dressed young woman standing off to his side. She was a few years older, yeah, but he'd recognize her no matter how old she was.
"Cassie." David muttered, and for a brief moment his expression was undisguised, pale and shaken. Then his eyes hardened and the uncertainty slipped back out of sight. His eyes darted back to the crowd, instantly suspicious. Where one Animorph was, more were sure to follow.
"What are you doing here?"
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Still, there was a brief flash of guilt that crossed her face. Cassie shouldered the bag again, tried to smile at him. "I'm here on vacation. Kind of."
Then she looked, for a moment, like she wanted to ask him something important. Instead, she asked lightly: "What about you? What are you doing here? In Paris?"
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So what is Cassie really doing here? Well, he knew this was the future - and leave it to the Admiral to send him to the Paris of his future. The thought that the Animorphs might have won the war by now doesn't even cross his mind - because how insane is that? Four kids, a bird and an alien defeating an army of brain-stealing alien slugs? It's insane. It was always insane. That they all expected him to go along with their wannabe-superhero act just cemented their insanity in David's mind.
He glances to either side of him again, almost unconsciously, expecting a tiger or bear rising from the Seine. He looks no closer to relaxing when he sees there is none.
"What are you really doing here?" he asks pointedly, folding his arms. "And where are the others?"
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"I'm not lying." She says this with a practiced calmness to her tone, and moves to sit in a nearby seat that faces in his direction. She doesn't miss the nervous way his eyes dart around, like he expects some horrible monster to pop out and attack him. And with another twist of guilt, she realizes it's probably Jake and the others he's looking for. "I am here on vacation, though I didn't exactly choose to come here. I came from the Barge." She'd watch his face for any recognition of the word, to try to confirm whether he actually was on the Barge as well.
Then she shakes her head. "And they aren't here, it's only me." Rachel too, yes, but she's not sure where exactly her best friend is, at the moment. She hasn't been able to find her since they were all forced off for the port.
"The others--" a troubled look plays across her face. Ax had gone missing, and Jake had rounded up the rest of the Animorphs--except Cassie--to find him. She wanted to believe that they'd come back, that they'd be totally fine. But it had been a dangerous mission from the start, and she worried every time she thought about it. "--they aren't even on Earth anymore. Not in our timeline."
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"The Barge, huh..." Impulsively, he decides to forego any lies he could come up with about whether or not he's from the Barge. What good would they do? If she's there, she'd be able to find out easily enough anyway. "As a warden, right? Always the pillar of morality," he adds with a bitter smirk that doesn't quite reach his eyes. If he deserves to be on the Barge as a prisoner, surely her and the others, they deserve it double.
He leans forward, watching the Animorph intensely, fairly radiating suppressed energy. He wants to do something. Fight or flight. The fact that it's just Cassie doesn't calm him the way it used to. He'd trusted her, before... as much as he trusted any of them, anyway. But the last time he saw her, he hadn't hesitated to use her against Rachel.
"But you're not with them." You can almost hear the wheels turning in his head. "Why? That's not your style. Or theirs. You wouldn't have taken any offer from the Admiral if you were still waiting for them to come back."
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Cassie links her hands together and doesn't budge in her seat, not even under his harsh stare. She does seem attentive to his movements, however. Wary. He'd proved himself dangerous enough in the past and even if she felt bad for him on some levels, even if she could sympathize and be cordial to him, that didn't mean she trusted him an inch. Not after any of what he'd pulled on them.
The troubled look deepens, and the anxiety that she feels about the other Animorph's disappearance emerges on her face in reaction to his prodding.
She'd wanted to go. She'd been ready to drop it all--the 'normal life' that she'd managed to delicately carve out from the debris the war had left behind--and hop on that ship with the rest of them, leave on a likely suicidal mission to go rescue Ax. He'd saved her life countless times in the past, and the very least she could do was return the favor.
Jake had been right, though, of course. He'd already known what she needed to do, even before she'd tried to volunteer to help. They'd worked so hard and achieved so much. She had to stay, she had to protect what they'd fought literally tooth and nail to gain.
But Jake and the rest of them had been gone for more than half a year now, and there was a deep-felt fear that gnawed at her. It was a very real feeling, one she'd felt as she'd stood on that hill and told Jake where Tobias was, and then watched him fly away.
It was this gut-feeling that that was the last time she'd ever see Jake again.
And so when the Admiral had approached her and offered her a deal, how could she refuse? It was a chance to make sure she didn't lose her friends.
To make sure that she didn't lose Jake. Again.
"I'm not with them, no." She didn't really owe David an explanation, not for anything. Still, Cassie looks to him, frowns. Her voice is quieter, but somehow still measurably calm. "I don't know if they'll come back. They've been gone for awhile, and where they went was extremely dangerous."
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The look he's watching her now with is one she's seen from him before - in the barn, the day before he turned on them in the Marriott. It's a cold, speculative look, like she's an animal in the zoo. Like he's sizing her up. Which is exactly what he's doing, of course. He certainly doesn't trust her, not after what happened, and even if she won't get her hands dirty that doesn't mean she won't leave it to someone else to.
"So, they're all dead but you, huh?" He leans back in the seat, eyeing Cassie searchingly. There's no compassion in his tone, no sympathy. They knew what they were getting into, they had a choice. Not like him. If they wanted to charge off onto some crazy suicide mission in space, they had only themselves to blame for getting killed.
Jake had to have known whatever mission they were planning was a suicide mission, why else would he have left Cassie behind? Jake had always liked her, like Rachel and her pet bird. But even David couldn't believe Jake would be reckless enough to go on a suicide mission as long as they Yeerks were still a threat on Earth. He certainly wouldn't leave Cassie behind to fight the fight alone. And that could only mean one thing.
The idea's so insane that David has to chuckle and shake his head, incredulous. "You're trying to tell me that the war's over somehow? That you guys managed to drive the Yeerks off the Earth?"
Now he knows she's lying. It's just plain impossible. Six kids versus a couple hundred thousand slugs? There's no way. She's got some angle to this. Somehow, some way. Could she be a Controller? David has to stop himself from tightening his grip on the armrests at the thought. He hadn't considered that possibility.
If she was a Controller, wouldn't she have already acted? Tried to capture him somehow? Maybe she's waiting for something. David wishes he had Will or Tim here right now, he could use a little backup. But for now he'll play the game. See where she's going with this.
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But it wasn't an excuse. They'd been normal kids, too, before that fateful night when Elfangor had landed.
Suddenly Cassie looks incredibly weary, maybe even a little older. Her voice is firmer this time when she responds. "We did what we could at the time to help you, David. What we thought was best. You don't have to accept that, I'm not asking you to. But--" She shakes her head. He hadn't really understood back when it'd all happened. Instead, he'd chosen to act out in his own self-interest, and in the process he'd attempted to kill them all. "--I tried, you know? Maybe everything wasn't handled the best way it could've been, maybe we could've done something different." Her eyes lock with his, serious. "But I can't change what did happen. I can only say that I'm sorry."
Then her hands harshly tighten on the bag in her lap, and her expression grows still. She wasn't searching for sympathy from him--why would he even give it?--but what he says still stings a great deal. Her lips thin, but she somehow manages to keep control of her expression. "I don't know if they're dead." It's easy to tell from the way she says it that she may believe, however much she doesn't want to, that they might be dead. That it could be very likely.
"But the war has been over for a little more than three years now. The Yeerks surrendered, Visser One--" Then she quickly corrects herself, realizing that David may not have known about the Visser's promotion. "--Well, Visser Three surrendered. He was put on trial and sentenced to life, without a host. We had a little bit of help in the end, but yes. We won. The war is over, Earth is free."
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No, they hadn't been normal kids. He'd been a normal kid. They were... self-righteous wannabe superheroes, that's what they were.
"I don't want your apology," David sneers, getting to his feet. He can't even pretend to be relaxed now. "You and the others didn't do what you did to help me, you did what you did because you wanted my blue box." Even now, it was still 'his' blue box as far as he was concerned. "You just picked me up because you didn't have the guts to leave me to the Yeerks and Jake wanted an extra soldier to snap to attention and follow his every command." Despite the very real bitterness in David's words, there's something petulant in his voice... perhaps even something childish. "If anyone deserves to be inmates on the Barge, it's you and the other Animorphs."
There's a small, mean little smile that flickers across David's face at the tone in Cassie's voice, which says so much more than words ever could. There's a part of him that can't help but think, So there really is a little justice in the world at this news. So Jake and the others wanted to be superheroes? They got their wish. "Right. Sure." He meets Cassie's eyes and smiles grimly. She's not fooling him, and she's probably not fooling herself either.
"Guess the big bad Andalites came in and saved the day then." He had no love lost for the Andalites, any more than he did for the Yeerks or any of the other alien meddlers, but he couldn't conceive of any other war the Yeerks would surrender, not with all their firepower and numbers. "And you all get to be remembered as heroes and Jake gets to be the big leader who saved the world. He must be proud."
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Then she slides up to her own feet, and looks him directly in the eye. "But you need to wake up." Her words are sharper, now, as if to say pay attention, yet her voice is empty of any actual anger. "You still don't understand how incredibly dangerous it was back then, how incredibly desperate the situation on Earth was, how screwed over, at that point, we all were. And how much of a struggle, day by day, it was to get up, to know that and to still go and fight. To know that at any moment, the Yeerks could find out our identity and kill us or infest us, or do the same to our families. To still try, even after hours and hours of exhausting missions and morphing, to keep going even through the absolute terror and horror and panic, to know that even through all this we could only ever barely make a dent in the Yeerks' invasion, could only try to maintain and still continually lose footing in the war. To even experience all that, again and again, and then go back and continue fighting. So if you think we did all that to be heroes, that we fought in a war that we had next to zero chance of winning just for some fame, then you're missing the point completely.
"We never chose to be sucked into that war, not anymore than you did. We never wanted it, we never asked for it." Then, with a little more emphasis, "I never wanted it. I never wanted to hurt anybody or to see anyone be hurt." And that'd been part of her struggle, for all those three years. To endlessly wish there was a peaceful way out. "But the Yeerks gave us no choice. Out of all the planets in the universe, out of all the places they could've chose, they chose Earth. And every day since I learned that, and every day since, I wished it hadn't been that way. And it's not your fault that you found the blue box and got sucked into the war, like we did. It was never something we ever wished on anyone else.
"We had families back then, too, before it all, and we had school and we had normal lives. Just like you did. And we could've stayed ignorant and tried to ignore what was going on around us and let the Yeerks take us all one by one. Because, you know what? We were kids, then, too. Hell, we could've run scared and blamed it on how utterly and completely futile it all seemed. That would've been the easy route. That would've been the selfish route.
"But what did we do instead? We fought. We didn't turn away from it." Although Cassie knew that there had been more than one time where she (and others) had wanted to quit, had come so close to quitting forever, to turning their back on the war. Those had been some of the lowest times, but even then--in Cassie's case--there'd been a light to it. She'd found Aftran, she'd freed that little girl Karen, and she'd made the first peace between Yeerk and human. She'd realized that it was possible, and that not everything in war was completely black or white. "We faced up to it, we met it head on, because we had to. Because we understood that there was more at stake than just ourselves, that we had responsibilities that we had to meet even if we didn't want them. Even if we never asked for them."
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Then Cassie runs both hands against her cheeks, through her hair, and gives him a troubled look. "The Andalites didn't really help. They wanted to blow Earth up because they thought it'd eliminate the Yeerks as a threat if they did. If we hadn't intervened, if we hadn't done what we'd done, then Earth would've been completely destroyed. And Jake." Her voice goes a notch quieter. "Jake... hasn't been the same person, because of what happened. He took everything that happened, all the weight of the war and all the bad things that happened during it, on his shoulders. And he carried that, even all the years after the war. He didn't even really care about how the rest of the world saw him."
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"You all had the power to walk away," he says slowly at last, every syllable vibrating with anger. "You had the choice. As much and Jake and you and the others liked to talk about how you didn't, you did. You could have said at any time you'd just leave the war to people who are supposed to fight and went back to being normal kids. But you didn't do that, because you didn't want to. Jake and Rachel, they got off on the power. You... I didn't think you did. But I didn't think you could do a lot of things that you did."
"Damn it, don't look at me like that, you had a choice!" he all-but-yells, drawing stares and attention he no longer cares in the slightest about. They did. She did. They didn't have their homes and their families ripped away from them, didn't have to sleep in a drafty barn or get treated like the outsider. And yet, what Cassie says about fighting instead of running, that touches a nerve. It sounds uncomfortably like something Tim or Dick or John would say. Has Cassie already talked to them? Told them about me? His heart races at just the thought.
The calmer Cassie gets, the louder and more emotional David becomes. That emotion in her eyes is far too easy for David to see as pity, and like Marco, he's always found pity's sting to be intolerable. "And don't give me that shit about having 'faith' in me either! I couldn't even go out on my own for one night without Jake coming down on me and threatening to kill me! You're hypocrites, all of you. And you most of all, standing there and acting like you all were doing the right thing when Jake threatened me and Rachel threatened my family and the both of them decided to trap me in a living hell!"
He wishes it was anyone but Cassie. If it was Jake, Marco, Rachel, he'd have punched them by now. He would have attacked. But there's something about Cassie that makes him hesitate, even now. It was why, out of all the Animorphs, she was the only one he didn't go after that terrible night. It was why he'd retreated when she showed up in her own whale morph instead of continuing to fight.
"Just... just go home, Cassie," he whispers, his voice quivering. "The Barge doesn't need you. I don't need you. Go preach to someone who doesn't know what you're all about."
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So he begins to morph. Right there, right in full view of the Seine and all the passengers around. No one notices for a few seconds, but when the beak emerges people start screaming. David doesn't care. He keeps morphing, his clothes falling around him as he races to morph the golden eagle. He has to get away from Cassie right now, that's all he knows. The moment his wings emerge and he's capable of flight he takes off unsteadily, a misshapen bird that everyone around Cassie's gawking at.
He doesn't look back.
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