Drabble dump (6 Animorphs + 1 Bones)
Below the
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Elfangor/Loren
Spoilers: Andalite Chronicles
Words: 620
Rating: G
Prompt: Winter: Animorphs, Elfangor/Loren, iceskating
I required Loren's assistance to don the 'skates' used by humans to glide across frozen ponds of water. They would make excellent weapons to disable an assailant, although perhaps not to kill. Curiously, however, they are used only for recreation. Humans.
When she had finished tying the laces of my skates, she reached into her bag and produced a blue hat, quite thick and fluffy with what I knew to be called a 'pompom' on the top. She pulled it over my human head. It was warm, which I assumed was the purpose of the thing, but made it hard to hear and created a feeling of unease in my Andalite self, as there were of course no holes in the material from which my now nonexistent stalk eyes could protrude.
"There," Loren said, looking satisfied, and extended a gloved hand to help me to my hoo- feet. "Very human." I took the proffered limb, attempting to stand, but the thin blades attached to the soles of the skates caused me to stumble. I frowned.
"These skates seem to have a very poor design."
Loren laughed, gripping my shoulders tightly. "It takes some getting used to. Besides, they're not designed for use on a regular floor. Come on."
Though it was only several yards, in relativity hardly any distance at all, to the edge of the ice, it took several minutes for me to get used to the suddenly much more difficult concept of balancing not only on two legs but on two legs with very thin feet. Recalling the image Arbron had conjured aboard the GalaxyTree, of humans falling constantly all over the planet because they had no means of balance, I laughed to myself. It seemed our ignorance was more correct than I'd thought.
"Mind sharing the joke?" Loren asked, as she eased herself onto the ice.
"Just an old memory." I very carefully placed one thin skate onto the slippery surface, gripping the nearby wall tightly with one hand and Loren's glove with the other. Sure to test my footing on the ice before lifting my other foot from solid ground, I managed to make it away from the gate before my skates vanished from beneath me and I found myself falling onto my human behind. I now understood the need for padding in that area.
Loren laughed so hard she very nearly fell over herself.
"I do not see the joke," I informed her, though my tone may not have seemed as annoyed as I had intended, given that my head was still at least three human 'feet' below hers.
"The look on your face!" she gasped, doubling over. Her face was very red, though if it was from the cold or the laughter I couldn't tell.
"Would you mind helping me up?" I asked her, though I was now very hard pressed not to start chuckling myself. "My behind is getting quite cold and wet."
"Right. Yeah." Struggling to keep a 'straight face' (a human term which I use although I still do not understand its exact meaning), she assisted me back into a standing position and I held very still, determined not to fall again. She took a single look at the expression of concentration on my features and abandoned all attempts at solemnity, throwing an arm across my shoulders and laughing so hard that I very nearly fell again.
"I still do not see the humor," I said. Her breath was very warm on my cheek.
She was able to stop laughing for long enough to remove my hat, ruffling the hair beneath and planting a kiss on my forehead. "You'll get it someday," she told me, replacing the hat. "You always do."
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Rachel
Spoilers: None
Words: 162
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Prompt: Animorphs, Rachel, Bone shattering
Crunch, goes someone's skull in your mouth, and there's something slippery on your tongue, something hot and wet and soft. Might be a Yeerk. Might be a brain. Maybe both, and you don't care.
Squish, goes the thing in your mouth, and it's bloody and tasteless and torn apart by your teeth. There's someone in your paws but you can't tell if they're alive or dead, human or Hork-Bajir. It's a Controller and that's all that matters.
Crack, goes the Controller's spine in your grip and they go limp, dead, very dead, and you toss them to the Taxxons because you've already forgotten.
Squelch, goes the Taxxon you have in your paws now, claws tearing through the soft flesh, and you can understand them now because there's blood on your paws and on your tongue and in your ears and eyes and nose and you want more.
< Rachel, > says the hawk above you, and you wake up, and it's over.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Loren
Spoilers: #49, #54
Words: 242
Rating: PG
Prompt: Disability: Animorphs, Loren, looking back she thinks life after the accident was easier in some ways than life after she's healed
The day she loses Champ is worse than the day she lost Tobias.
She's ashamed to admit it and she feels like a failure of a mother, but she cries over Champ's grave in the sprawling backyard of the house Cassie made sure she had, and all she feels when she thinks of Tobias is a spark of maternal warmth that never had a chance to burst into flame.
She's had exactly three months and eight days with her son. She's had over five years with her dog.
And it was easier before Tobias came back. Easier because she hardly knew she had a son, and easier because she knew she'd lost something but it was only afterwards that she knew how huge and wonderful that something was. The blue creature that visited her dreams remained in her dreams, and the warm weight of the child that had been pressed into her arms in the hospital was nothing but a faded memory, like an old photograph of something lost and painful, folded up and stuck into the pages of a book to be forgotten.
Tobias returned and her world exploded. Sight. Son. Aliens. Then as suddenly as it had begun it was over. The sight and the aliens remained. The son did not.
She didn't need Champ anymore but she kept him anyway, because he reminded her of happier times. She cries at his grave and asks God to bring him back.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Tobias/Rachel
Spoilers: None
Words: 176
Rating: PG
Prompt: Animorphs, Rachel/Tobias, The scars we bare
There are no scars crisscrossing your bodies, no faded pink lines on bare skin that proclaim bravery and pain. She is flawless, the girl every boy wants but never has, and he is young, like his human morph shrinks when he's not using it.
It doesn't matter if the world can't see the sacrifices you've made. The scars are cut into your hearts, not your skin, and they aren't visible but always there. Like blood seeping out of unseen wounds and you're dying, slowly, slowly.
You stand naked before each other even when dressed, because you each know the other's scars, you each know every cut and slash seared into your hearts and you sew each other up just enough to keep yourselves from bleeding out. You open yourselves up and bare the scars because to stand alone with this pain is to drive yourself mad and to stand together is just enough to keep you fighting. Just a little longer, just until someone saves you, and you're dying, slowly, slowly, a little more each day.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Rachel
Spoilers: None
Words: 321
Rating: PG-13 for implied sexual activities
Prompt: Animorphs, Rachel, Virginity
She was never one of those girls. Not the loose kind, that loses her virginity by age fourteen or becomes completely uncool. And not the conservative kind, insisting that she'll be a virgin bride. She's her own kind of girl, the kind that goes with the flow. Whatever happens, happens.
Her first time is Marco and she's frankly ashamed to admit it. It could have been anyone. It's just because he's there. Afterwards he says, "Well, I have to admit the fantasies were just a little better."
She tells him, "That you even had fantasies at all is more than a little pathetic."
"It worked, didn't it?" And she has to admit that he's right.
They get together a few more times over the next few years, but it's always just a you were there moment and it doesn't mean anything. She and Tobias try it sometimes, but it's awkward, because even though his mind is mature his body is still the gawky thirteen year old she met him as, and he just isn't comfortable in it in the first place. She tries Ax in human morph and even Cassie once, in the loft above the barn, but that doesn't happen again. She never touches Jake because that would be weird (like screwing an alien and a hawk isn't weird enough) but there was a moment there, once.
It's not that she's easy. She doesn't do it for the sex, even. She does it for the release. Because nothing, nothing comes close to the high she gets in battle, but the passion is enough to tide her over until the next one. She's pretty sure the others do it for the same reason. But she needs it the most.
She was never one of those girls. She still isn't. She's still taking what comes to her, tearing it up like only she can, and letting the pieces fall where they may.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Aximili, Tobias
Spoilers: Andalite Chronicles
Words: 369
Rating: G
Prompt: drabble365days #1: Moonlight (1/100)
< I still find it odd that Earth has only one moon. >
Even with his hawk vision, Tobias is only just able to make out the shadow of his friend across the meadow. < How many do Andalites have? >
< Four. > Aximili canters along the edge of the field. < They are called Ligras, Torivon, Semitur, and Mancrin. >
< Must be pretty bright during the night. >
< In comparison to Earth nights, yes, the homeworld is much less dark. > Aximili hesitates before continuing. < When I was much younger and my brother was home for a visit we would sometimes sneak out after our parents were asleep to walk in the hills. He taught me many things that I was not supposed to know. >
< Elfangor, breaking rules? I never. > Tobias stops. < Sorry, that was mean. >
< I do not begrudge my shorm for stating the truth, Tobias. My brother has broken many Andalite laws, as have I. As humans say, it seems to run in the family. >
< So what sort of things did he tell you? >
< He told me stories of the things he'd seen off world, both things the Electorate and the military have deemed a secret and things that are considered inappropriate for a child to hear. He would not tell me of the time he spent missing, presumed dead. >
< Then that would be--? >
< Yes, I presume this would be his time on Earth. >
Tobias says nothing.
< He also told me that the Andalites have some things very wrong about extraterrestrials. That they are not all bad. He would not say more than that. >
There's a long stretch of silence, as Aximili continues to graze in the dimly lit meadow.
< Is it irrational, > he says finally, hesitantly, < to human sensibilities, that though this is a different planet and a different moon, its light reminds me of my brother? >
< No, Ax, > Tobias says, and he doesn't think he could sound more sincere if he were simply stating his name. < No, I don't think that's irrational at all. >
*
Fandom: Bones
Characters: s4 grad students
Spoilers: s3 finale (3x15 "Pain in the Heart")
Words: 181
Rating: PG
Prompt: Author’s choice, any, standing on the bones of the past
They all know they aren't going to last.
It's become sort of an ongoing wager between the rest of the grad students, who's going to last longest on the rotation and who's going to end up being hired. Mostly those involved are kept out of the loop; it isn't fair if they bet on themselves. They still know it, though. Everyone knows it.
The Jefforsonian lab is probably the best in the country, maybe the world. It's like heaven to work there, in theory. When put into practice that theory becomes hell.
It's not just that the entire staff is absolutely crazy. Brennan doesn't know how to communicate, Sweets tries to psychoanalyze anyone who'll stand still long enough, Angela and Hodgins feel the need to drag everyone into everything that should stay private even though they aren't together anymore. It's a factor, sure, but anyone who gets into the lab is tough enough to handle almost anything thrown at them.
No, what makes it so difficult is Zack Addy.
He's never there, rarely talked about, and yet somehow always hovering above their heads, whispering, I was better, I did better, they liked me better.
Sometimes Dr. Brennan says things without thinking. There's something we missed, but Zack would have seen it. Zack wouldn't have gotten it wrong. Zack would have figured it out by now. But mostly it's silent, like there's a ghost in the lab that you can only see out of the corner of your eye but never lets you forget that it's there.
They are, both literally and metaphorically, standing on the bones of the past. All they have to do now is try not to break them.
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Elfangor/Loren
Spoilers: Andalite Chronicles
Words: 620
Rating: G
Prompt: Winter: Animorphs, Elfangor/Loren, iceskating
I required Loren's assistance to don the 'skates' used by humans to glide across frozen ponds of water. They would make excellent weapons to disable an assailant, although perhaps not to kill. Curiously, however, they are used only for recreation. Humans.
When she had finished tying the laces of my skates, she reached into her bag and produced a blue hat, quite thick and fluffy with what I knew to be called a 'pompom' on the top. She pulled it over my human head. It was warm, which I assumed was the purpose of the thing, but made it hard to hear and created a feeling of unease in my Andalite self, as there were of course no holes in the material from which my now nonexistent stalk eyes could protrude.
"There," Loren said, looking satisfied, and extended a gloved hand to help me to my hoo- feet. "Very human." I took the proffered limb, attempting to stand, but the thin blades attached to the soles of the skates caused me to stumble. I frowned.
"These skates seem to have a very poor design."
Loren laughed, gripping my shoulders tightly. "It takes some getting used to. Besides, they're not designed for use on a regular floor. Come on."
Though it was only several yards, in relativity hardly any distance at all, to the edge of the ice, it took several minutes for me to get used to the suddenly much more difficult concept of balancing not only on two legs but on two legs with very thin feet. Recalling the image Arbron had conjured aboard the GalaxyTree, of humans falling constantly all over the planet because they had no means of balance, I laughed to myself. It seemed our ignorance was more correct than I'd thought.
"Mind sharing the joke?" Loren asked, as she eased herself onto the ice.
"Just an old memory." I very carefully placed one thin skate onto the slippery surface, gripping the nearby wall tightly with one hand and Loren's glove with the other. Sure to test my footing on the ice before lifting my other foot from solid ground, I managed to make it away from the gate before my skates vanished from beneath me and I found myself falling onto my human behind. I now understood the need for padding in that area.
Loren laughed so hard she very nearly fell over herself.
"I do not see the joke," I informed her, though my tone may not have seemed as annoyed as I had intended, given that my head was still at least three human 'feet' below hers.
"The look on your face!" she gasped, doubling over. Her face was very red, though if it was from the cold or the laughter I couldn't tell.
"Would you mind helping me up?" I asked her, though I was now very hard pressed not to start chuckling myself. "My behind is getting quite cold and wet."
"Right. Yeah." Struggling to keep a 'straight face' (a human term which I use although I still do not understand its exact meaning), she assisted me back into a standing position and I held very still, determined not to fall again. She took a single look at the expression of concentration on my features and abandoned all attempts at solemnity, throwing an arm across my shoulders and laughing so hard that I very nearly fell again.
"I still do not see the humor," I said. Her breath was very warm on my cheek.
She was able to stop laughing for long enough to remove my hat, ruffling the hair beneath and planting a kiss on my forehead. "You'll get it someday," she told me, replacing the hat. "You always do."
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Rachel
Spoilers: None
Words: 162
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Prompt: Animorphs, Rachel, Bone shattering
Crunch, goes someone's skull in your mouth, and there's something slippery on your tongue, something hot and wet and soft. Might be a Yeerk. Might be a brain. Maybe both, and you don't care.
Squish, goes the thing in your mouth, and it's bloody and tasteless and torn apart by your teeth. There's someone in your paws but you can't tell if they're alive or dead, human or Hork-Bajir. It's a Controller and that's all that matters.
Crack, goes the Controller's spine in your grip and they go limp, dead, very dead, and you toss them to the Taxxons because you've already forgotten.
Squelch, goes the Taxxon you have in your paws now, claws tearing through the soft flesh, and you can understand them now because there's blood on your paws and on your tongue and in your ears and eyes and nose and you want more.
< Rachel, > says the hawk above you, and you wake up, and it's over.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Loren
Spoilers: #49, #54
Words: 242
Rating: PG
Prompt: Disability: Animorphs, Loren, looking back she thinks life after the accident was easier in some ways than life after she's healed
The day she loses Champ is worse than the day she lost Tobias.
She's ashamed to admit it and she feels like a failure of a mother, but she cries over Champ's grave in the sprawling backyard of the house Cassie made sure she had, and all she feels when she thinks of Tobias is a spark of maternal warmth that never had a chance to burst into flame.
She's had exactly three months and eight days with her son. She's had over five years with her dog.
And it was easier before Tobias came back. Easier because she hardly knew she had a son, and easier because she knew she'd lost something but it was only afterwards that she knew how huge and wonderful that something was. The blue creature that visited her dreams remained in her dreams, and the warm weight of the child that had been pressed into her arms in the hospital was nothing but a faded memory, like an old photograph of something lost and painful, folded up and stuck into the pages of a book to be forgotten.
Tobias returned and her world exploded. Sight. Son. Aliens. Then as suddenly as it had begun it was over. The sight and the aliens remained. The son did not.
She didn't need Champ anymore but she kept him anyway, because he reminded her of happier times. She cries at his grave and asks God to bring him back.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Tobias/Rachel
Spoilers: None
Words: 176
Rating: PG
Prompt: Animorphs, Rachel/Tobias, The scars we bare
There are no scars crisscrossing your bodies, no faded pink lines on bare skin that proclaim bravery and pain. She is flawless, the girl every boy wants but never has, and he is young, like his human morph shrinks when he's not using it.
It doesn't matter if the world can't see the sacrifices you've made. The scars are cut into your hearts, not your skin, and they aren't visible but always there. Like blood seeping out of unseen wounds and you're dying, slowly, slowly.
You stand naked before each other even when dressed, because you each know the other's scars, you each know every cut and slash seared into your hearts and you sew each other up just enough to keep yourselves from bleeding out. You open yourselves up and bare the scars because to stand alone with this pain is to drive yourself mad and to stand together is just enough to keep you fighting. Just a little longer, just until someone saves you, and you're dying, slowly, slowly, a little more each day.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Rachel
Spoilers: None
Words: 321
Rating: PG-13 for implied sexual activities
Prompt: Animorphs, Rachel, Virginity
She was never one of those girls. Not the loose kind, that loses her virginity by age fourteen or becomes completely uncool. And not the conservative kind, insisting that she'll be a virgin bride. She's her own kind of girl, the kind that goes with the flow. Whatever happens, happens.
Her first time is Marco and she's frankly ashamed to admit it. It could have been anyone. It's just because he's there. Afterwards he says, "Well, I have to admit the fantasies were just a little better."
She tells him, "That you even had fantasies at all is more than a little pathetic."
"It worked, didn't it?" And she has to admit that he's right.
They get together a few more times over the next few years, but it's always just a you were there moment and it doesn't mean anything. She and Tobias try it sometimes, but it's awkward, because even though his mind is mature his body is still the gawky thirteen year old she met him as, and he just isn't comfortable in it in the first place. She tries Ax in human morph and even Cassie once, in the loft above the barn, but that doesn't happen again. She never touches Jake because that would be weird (like screwing an alien and a hawk isn't weird enough) but there was a moment there, once.
It's not that she's easy. She doesn't do it for the sex, even. She does it for the release. Because nothing, nothing comes close to the high she gets in battle, but the passion is enough to tide her over until the next one. She's pretty sure the others do it for the same reason. But she needs it the most.
She was never one of those girls. She still isn't. She's still taking what comes to her, tearing it up like only she can, and letting the pieces fall where they may.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Aximili, Tobias
Spoilers: Andalite Chronicles
Words: 369
Rating: G
Prompt: drabble365days #1: Moonlight (1/100)
< I still find it odd that Earth has only one moon. >
Even with his hawk vision, Tobias is only just able to make out the shadow of his friend across the meadow. < How many do Andalites have? >
< Four. > Aximili canters along the edge of the field. < They are called Ligras, Torivon, Semitur, and Mancrin. >
< Must be pretty bright during the night. >
< In comparison to Earth nights, yes, the homeworld is much less dark. > Aximili hesitates before continuing. < When I was much younger and my brother was home for a visit we would sometimes sneak out after our parents were asleep to walk in the hills. He taught me many things that I was not supposed to know. >
< Elfangor, breaking rules? I never. > Tobias stops. < Sorry, that was mean. >
< I do not begrudge my shorm for stating the truth, Tobias. My brother has broken many Andalite laws, as have I. As humans say, it seems to run in the family. >
< So what sort of things did he tell you? >
< He told me stories of the things he'd seen off world, both things the Electorate and the military have deemed a secret and things that are considered inappropriate for a child to hear. He would not tell me of the time he spent missing, presumed dead. >
< Then that would be--? >
< Yes, I presume this would be his time on Earth. >
Tobias says nothing.
< He also told me that the Andalites have some things very wrong about extraterrestrials. That they are not all bad. He would not say more than that. >
There's a long stretch of silence, as Aximili continues to graze in the dimly lit meadow.
< Is it irrational, > he says finally, hesitantly, < to human sensibilities, that though this is a different planet and a different moon, its light reminds me of my brother? >
< No, Ax, > Tobias says, and he doesn't think he could sound more sincere if he were simply stating his name. < No, I don't think that's irrational at all. >
*
Fandom: Bones
Characters: s4 grad students
Spoilers: s3 finale (3x15 "Pain in the Heart")
Words: 181
Rating: PG
Prompt: Author’s choice, any, standing on the bones of the past
They all know they aren't going to last.
It's become sort of an ongoing wager between the rest of the grad students, who's going to last longest on the rotation and who's going to end up being hired. Mostly those involved are kept out of the loop; it isn't fair if they bet on themselves. They still know it, though. Everyone knows it.
The Jefforsonian lab is probably the best in the country, maybe the world. It's like heaven to work there, in theory. When put into practice that theory becomes hell.
It's not just that the entire staff is absolutely crazy. Brennan doesn't know how to communicate, Sweets tries to psychoanalyze anyone who'll stand still long enough, Angela and Hodgins feel the need to drag everyone into everything that should stay private even though they aren't together anymore. It's a factor, sure, but anyone who gets into the lab is tough enough to handle almost anything thrown at them.
No, what makes it so difficult is Zack Addy.
He's never there, rarely talked about, and yet somehow always hovering above their heads, whispering, I was better, I did better, they liked me better.
Sometimes Dr. Brennan says things without thinking. There's something we missed, but Zack would have seen it. Zack wouldn't have gotten it wrong. Zack would have figured it out by now. But mostly it's silent, like there's a ghost in the lab that you can only see out of the corner of your eye but never lets you forget that it's there.
They are, both literally and metaphorically, standing on the bones of the past. All they have to do now is try not to break them.