What if Animorphs was set before the civil rights movement?

thejakeformerlyknownasprince:

[First of all: I misread this as “set DURING the civil rights movement” and wrote an entire AU accordingly; hope this is okay. Secondly, I justified them being more civically engaged by making all the Animorphs 19 in this AU.]

They plan it carefully, because they have, literally, only one shot at this. Jake takes the time to steal a requisitioned Viet Cong rifle, because — much as Marco hates the extra risk — they need the whole thing to look right. Marco’s the one who flirts with the staff sergeant (who, like him, probably tried to plead out of the draft by dint of “homosexual sympathies”) until Grummald agrees to let him and Jake patrol together.

That evening Jake slings his gun over his shoulder (hoping that no one notices in the low light it’s an AK-47 rather than their standard-issue M16) and promises everyone that he and Marco will be back before 2000 hours.

They march almost half their patrol route before Marco says, “You could still take this chance, you know.”

Jake’s jaw tightens. They’ve had this conversation before. He points out that he’s three months out from making it home free. Marco points out that Jake could get called back for another tour. Jake claims he’ll go AWOL if that happens. Marco starts to protest. Jake states flatly that his decision is final.

They’re at the furthest-out point of their loop when Jake takes the radio off his belt. “PFC Berenson to Arlo Base, do you copy?”

“Falsworth to Berenson, I copy.”

Jake relays their position, then adds, “We can hear something movin’ about hundred yards south of us. Gonna go check it out. Like as not it’s another of those wild pigs, nothin’ to worry about.” He gives a nervous laugh and adds, “If it’s another fuckin’ tiger… speak well of us at home, yeah?”

Marco smirks. He’s seen Jake go toe-to-toe with a real tiger out in this jungle before. The predators should be scared of them, not the other way around.

“Copy that,” Falsworth says. “Say safe, Private.” Jake signs off.

“Last chance,” Marco says. “You and me, swap right now—”

“How would you carry me back to camp?” Jake asks. And before Marco can come up with an answer, Jake raises the gun and fires.

The first bullet shreds through the flesh of Marco’s right thigh; the second impacts the femur on that same leg and sticks in it with a sickening crack of bone. Jake drops the gun in almost the same motion that he snaps the safety back on, already diving forward to lean pressure on the wounds.

As Marco leans back and does his best not to scream or pass out, Jake yanks out his med kit and does a hasty but effective job of disinfecting the holes then stapling them shut. Last of all he pulls out the pre-prepped shot of heroin and, leaning close to find a vein, slides cool, blissful apathy into Marco’s arm.

“You’ll take care of yourself, right?” Marco slurs as Jake is carrying him back to camp. “You’ll be okay?”

Jake shifts position slightly, wrapping his free hand around Marco’s wrist. “I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”

The system works brutally fast, offering Marco a disability discharge and preliminary repair surgery before dumping him out of its care and off Uncle Sam’s list of concerns as fast as it possibly can. That suits Marco just fine; he limps out of the hospital on crutches and takes the first opportunity he can to morph, heal, and fly home.

Home, as it turns out, needs his help. Rachel has been leading the team since Jake got drafted, and the half a dozen yeerk projects she’s stopped don’t really make up for the four dead civilians she’s racked up in that time. When Marco demands to know what they were thinking, Tobias snaps at him to give them a break. Marco knows what that’s about. Tobias feels irrationally guilty that he’s got no home address, no draft card, no lottery number hanging over his head. Good, Marco thinks viciously, still unable to forget Jake’s attempt at a cheerful wave as the MedEvac helicopter rose into the air. Tobias should be guilty.

Cassie gets arrested. Tobias is the one who goes to bail her out, because he’s the one with the appearance that will automatically earn the cops’ trust and respect. He finds her sitting in a cell with a dozen other protestors, eye blackened and lip bleeding from a police officer’s baton.

“Did you save any more elephants?” he asks Cassie as they let her out, trying to lighten the mood.

“No,” she says, sounding tired, sounding sad. “Apparently I was trespassing. In a public cafe.”

Not knowing what else to do, Tobias pulls her into an awkward hug. She leans against him, so he guesses he did okay.

“Is she your girlfriend?” one of the cops asks, sounding like he has an opinion on the subject if so.

“That’s none of your fucking business,” Tobias says softly, gently, as he continues to rub small circles into the back of her shoulder.

Marco considers telling Jake just how bad it’s gotten in the real war (as they call it, to tell it apart from this fucking farce of LBJ’s) but finds he can’t come up with the words. Even their system of codes might not be enough to protect them, if a controller intercepted one of the letters. That’s the excuse Marco uses, anyway. The truth is that Jake’s letters are relentlessly cheerful in a way that Marco knows is a lie, and some combination of not wanting him to worry and sheer passive-aggression lead Marco to match Jake tone-for-tone.

Let me know if you want out. Ax and I will be there in an instant, Marco scrawls at the bottom of a typewritten page.

It’s not so bad over here, Jake answers. And anyway, we’ve gotta keep a low profile. Remember?

Rachel does not, it would appear, remember the part about keeping a low profile. They’re all angry, every single one of them, when the random asswipe calls Cassie an unrepeatable word. Cassie herself accepts it with a hard swallow and a dismissive look, and Marco settles for shouting back a couple insults of his own.

Rachel, on the other hand, feels the need to morph grizzly bear and bite said asswipe’s arm hard enough to break it. She doesn’t seem to care that there are two other witnesses present, or that the others are all shouting for her to stop.

She stops short of killing him. She even demorphs on her own, and goes charging out the back door of the automat into the empty lot beyond.

Marco throws caution to the wind and follows. “What was that?”

She whirls around, hair flying everywhere, tears on her face. “Why the fuck are we fighting so hard to save this country, huh? Huh?”

Marco runs a hand over his hair, unpleasantly surprised for the umpteenth time to remember it’s so short. At least the U.S. Army cutting it all off gave the neighborhood punks one less reason to call him a hippie queer and kick the shit out of him. Silver linings.

“I can fight my own battles, you know,” Cassie says quietly, stepping up next to Marco.

Rachel scrubs both hands over her eyes, sniffing harshly. “Was he…?”

“Not a controller.” Cassie smiles tightly. “Just a jerk.”

“I’d do it even if he was a controller,” Rachel says.

Which is why, feeling like an asshole the whole time but knowing it has to be done, Marco calls for a vote of no confidence against Rachel the very next day.

“This is because I’m a woman, isn’t it?” Rachel leans close to Marco’s face, pointing a shaking finger at him. “Because I’m some weak little female who can’t handle power in your eyes!”

It’s so wildly untrue that Marco almost laughs, but he’s pretty sure that then Rachel would kill him. “It’s because you’re out of control,” he whispers. “Because I don’t trust you not to get us killed. Because you’re one of my best friends and I don’t actually want you to die, but that’s the way you’re headed right now.”

“Rachel…” Cassie says. Whatever she’s about to say gets interrupted when the phone rings inside her house. Looking pathetically grateful for the excuse, she runs to go get it.

<This would just be a temporary measure,> Ax says, halfway between asking Marco and assuring Rachel, <until Prince Jake can come home.>

“Exactly.” Marco nods. “And he’ll be back in a matter of weeks.”

Tobias flutters, shifts, preens feathers. At last he says, <Rachel, I… I love you. But I want you to be safe, and…>

She rounds on him. “You too, then? I have to be kept safe? You don’t think I’m up for this? I should just stay home and embroider handkerchiefs and leave the fighting to the men?”

“You want Cassie to lead?” Marco babbles. “Let’s have Cassie in charge. I love that plan. That’s the plan where more people don’t die, let’s go with that plan.”

 Tobias trails off.

Cassie is standing in the doorway, phone still in hand, corkscrew cord stretching away into the house. She doesn’t seem to know she has it, because both her arms are wrapped around herself where she stands in the doorway and rocks slightly as she cries.

Marco feels all the air punched out of his lungs. He knows what she’s going to say, well before she finally finds the words.

It was fast. Jake’s mom repeats that seven or eight times. Single shot to the forehead, no warning. Body lost to the Mekong River. It was fast. Jake’s mom says it again, and Marco feels a curl of disgust underneath the rage. Of course it was fast; anything else wouldn’t have killed him. They’re Animorphs. Anything short of a bullet in the brainpan would’ve been no more than a momentary inconvenience for Jake.

 Ax says after the funeral.

<Yeah.> Tobias’s voice is dull. <None of us do.>

<No, I…> He glances at all of them at once. He pauses, sensing that this is sensitive ground. <She called Rachel’s mother ‘the divorcée’ more than once.>

“Yep.” Rachel bites out the word. “That about sums it up.”

<But I don’t understand.> Ax’s main eyes crinkle in a frown. <Unless I have the word wrong, this simply refers to the termination of the relationship between herself and your father.>

“It does.” Rachel sighs. “You got a problem with that?”

<They no longer wished to be wed, and so they were not. What does that have to do with Prince Jake’s grandmother?>

“I don’t know, Ax. I really don’t.”

<But why was she angered by your mother’s presence, but not similarly angered by your father’s?>

“Yeah,” Rachel says. “All really good questions. If you ever find any answers, be sure to let the rest of us know.”

Their argument seems so small, so silly now, Rachel thinks. She and Marco are sitting side-by-side a hundred yards up in an enormous pine overlooking the cemetery, watching through raptor eyes as Jake’s parents go through the last of the motions for the burial of an empty coffin. Then again, the entire Vietnam War seems horrifyingly petty in light of what’s happening with the yeerks, and that didn’t stop the two of them from bickering before.

<During the battles, Cassie makes the calls,> Rachel says. <She tells us when to attack, when to retreat, when to change the plan on the fly. The rest of the time, we vote. Yeah?>

<Agreed.> Marco shifts, talons scratching the bark. <First motion to put to the group: VA hospitals.>

Rachel glances over, a sharp twitch of her eagle neck. <What about them?>

<They’re full of wounded and disabled soldiers, and…> Marco lets out a laugh that is full of pain, not mirth. <And, and it’s funny. But maybe the worst fucking thing about being in Vietnam is that there are no yeerks. Not anywhere in the armed forces, anyway. Because why bother? The U.N. doesn’t give a shit about us, our country doesn’t give a shit about us, our own towns hated us so much they picked us to send off to die. We leave home where we get called hippie scum by the older generation, we go to kill some poor clueless kids who are trying to kill us back, we get home only to get spat on by hippie scum who call us babykillers. And even the yeerks don’t care about us, because no one else does. Which is downright hilarious, when you think about it.>

<You want to recruit more Animorphs.> Rachel’s plenty smart; she figures it out. <And you want to start where you know the yeerks won’t be. Start with people who already have military training.>



<Let’s put it to the group.> Rachel opens her wings. <Nothing much else for us to see around here, anyway.>

<Prince Cassie, do you ever… ever wonder what will happen if we win?> Ax asks one day.

She takes a hand off her pitchfork, beckoning him further into the barn. “I do. I assume you do too?”

<My people have very different customs from yours.> He steps delicately between the cages. <And some which are much the same. We have a term, vecol, which…> He shakes his head, a very human gesture. <It doesn’t matter. I worry sometimes, though. What my people might think of the team we now have. What you, my friends, might think of my people when you learn.>

Cassie leans the pitchfork against the corner between a post and the first horse stall. “I’m pretty sure if we win, we’ll claim Tobias was leading us the whole time.” She smiles. “He’ll hate that, of course, but pretty much any alternative would be worse.”

<You wouldn’t even acknowledge Prince Jake’s leadership?>

“Oh, we’d honor his memory, to be sure, if we could.” She takes a breath, feeling Ax’s fear — that her entire species will be measured and found wanting, for its outdated and terrible beliefs — and tries to find words. “Jake’s parents are Jewish. Marco’s mother is Latina. Rachel and I are female, and neither of us has the good white Protestant family to be fully American. James and Timmy and the others aren’t even allowed to have human rights in the U.S., much less…” She grimaces. “It’s not his fault, but Tobias…”

<Tobias is half andalite.> Ax says it with pride rather than defensiveness.

“And yet, he — or his human shape — also looks like the people you see on TV.” She raises her eyebrows. “You have to have noticed that none of the people on any of the shows look like most of us.”

<You are fighting against this, though.> Ax gestures to the Black Power poster Cassie’s dad hung above the refrigerator that holds their feeder mice. <You take the time to fight these battles, as well as those against the yeerks.>

“It’s like Toby said.” Cassie shrugs. “I want us to have a place to come back to where we can be safe, once the war is done.”

 Ax says. <Or rather, I think I do. Maybe it would be best for me to explain to you how we are taught to think of vecols, and maybe you could tell me how it is I can help this other fight of yours.>

Cassie takes his hand in both of hers. “Maybe I can help in your fight, while we’re at it. After all, there are infinite battles. As long as we don’t lose hope, we can keep fighting forever.”