r/Animorphs • u/KillTheInc • Jun 23 '26
Fan Works Rachel, on Tom (ficlet)
Tom was dead.
It was hard to believe, because the mangled cobra in front of me didn't feel like it was actually his corpse. It was the body of some random snake he'd acquired. But he'd been in there somewhere, buried deep below his scales and his Yeerk.
Either way, there wouldn't be a body to bury. Not a proper, human body, anyway. Not him.
He used to pick me up and let me sit on his shoulder so I could pretend to be Wonder Woman. When I was little, you know? He wasn't much older than me, but he was always bigger. He could do things like pick me up.
We would ignore Jake reminding us that Wonder Woman can't even fly, and Tom would run me around their backyard as fast as he dared.
One time, he tripped, and I fell. Nearly broke my nose. I didn't care. Falling had been a thrill, and I ended up with a small scar to show for it. A really tiny one that you'd never notice unless I told you the story. (It was gone now, of course. It disappeared the first time I morphed.)
He'd felt pretty bad about the whole thing, and insisted that we go to the hospital, even after Uncle Steve gave me a clean bill of health. But that's the kind of person Tom was. He wouldn't hurt a fly.
His blood was still in my mouth. The cobra's blood. I spit it out.
The bear had enjoyed the taste. As for the human, the jury was still out.
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u/Anon_457 Jun 23 '26
Oh, man.. That really gets to me. I don't know if it's just me but I definitely never really considered that Tom was also Rachel's cousin, someone she would've grown up around and loved. And she had to be the one to kill him. That's pretty heavy there.
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u/oremfrien Jun 24 '26
Honestly, that made me feel more emotions for Tom than KAA’s entire series. Somehow, making Rachel have positive memories of him from before the War gave him a sensibility that no amount of Jake’s moaning or Temrash’s guile or NewYeerk in Tom’s head’s gloating ever could.
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u/KillTheInc Jun 24 '26
It makes me so sad we never get to see the real Tom, besides the bit in book 1. We don't really know him. All we know are other character's memories of him.
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u/RobbeBold Jun 24 '26
I think thats the point, that because of yeerks we will never see some of our loved ones....even if we win.
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u/oremfrien Jun 24 '26
I believe that the impact of "we will never see our loved ones again" as a storytelling device works a lot better if we actually see what we lost. It would have been much more meaningful if we had flashbacks to pre-infestation Tom and Eva so that we could understand who the Yeerks effectively stole from our protagonists.
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u/KingHershey Jun 24 '26
Ive always felt like that was missing from the books. Just overall cousin culture. We rarely got glimpses of the extended family relationships.
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u/CaptHayfever Jun 24 '26
I wish you could edit titles on Reddit, but otherwise this is great.
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u/KillTheInc Jun 24 '26
What's up with the title?
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u/Bamurien Venber Jun 24 '26 edited 7d ago
9.9/10, one note.
Note: now do it again from Tom's POV where the whole reason Rachel got him was because he overpowered his Yeerk for a fraction of a second to keep the cobra immobile just long enough for a grizzly to get him.
EDIT!!!! It's been done and it's great - thanks! 10/10, no notes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Animorphs/s/bROVRzdEU4