/// biography.
[series]: Animorphs
[character]: Rachel
[character history / background]: idc, ur here 2nite
[character abilities]: i can b ur hero bb.
[character personality]:
Rachel always thought she was a pretty well-balanced girl, you know? Your average female teenager: interested in shopping and fashion, nurturing a social life and keeping that tempting possibility of a boyfriend in the back of her mind. Maybe in gym class she'd get a little too into the game, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be blown off as a competitive streak. Hell, she wasn't even egotistical; it would ruin her whole week if there was a gymnastics competition was going to be forced to take part in.
But then...that Andalite ship floated down like an angel or a curse...Elfangor. And then came the aliens and the fighting and the killing and...
There came a point where it couldn't be excused as a streak of anything or simply enthusiasm any longer. Just sheer recklessness and bloodlust.
Bloodlust. That was a word she avoided and tried not to concentrate too heavily on whenever it came up in conversations. She'd read it in books something and she'd ignore it, pretend that it didn't shame her to identify with it.
What she never could really grasp was that there was more to her than that. Everyone else knew that, understood that. They appreciated her not only for ability to kick ass on the battlefield, but also for her determination and dedication to the rest of the team. They knew if she told them she'd have their back, she would.
And maybe sometimes they worried about her, but they never feared her. But she couldn't help but wonder sometimes...why they held back. Pulled away.
Like, Cassie, toward the end. Like Jake.
It all changed, though, when the end finally did come. Like a snake striking...or a claw to the throat. Like a book snapping shut, all those loose ends seem to tie together in the oddest way. The war was over, but so was she, and all her fears, all her worries, they melted away. Because now, what was the point in concerning herself with surviving in a world where she didn't have to fight?
This world would never exist for her ever again. She never saw her own mangled corpse, and for this was glad. It was enough to see Tom's.
Rachel used to get angry easily, back when her body functioned as a living body should. It would happen often, at anyone. At the Yeerks, at Elfangor, at Jake, at Cassie, at Tobias. For whatever reason, her friends sometimes seemed weak, stupid and naive enough to get pissed at.
After she died, though, there just didn't seem as much a point to it anymore. Her rage just fizzled out.
And then she came to the City, and life skewed again. She was still....Rachel, only less so. And moreso. There was no Cassie to balance her out, no Jake to keep her in check, no Tobias...Maybe she reacted the loneliness. Maybe she became that same Rachel again, that Rachel that scared her. The one that played so easily into Crayak's game.
But she'll hear the Ellimist's voice in her head sometimes and remember:
You mattered.
She mattered. So Rachel breathes a little easier, and lets that emptiness slip past her, on a good day.
But she keeps her grizzly morph on hand. Just in case.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: post-series [54+]