Work Text:
Be careful, Rachel.
The first time he thought-spoke those words, for her only, she sauntered with the grace and bravado of a cat towards Chapman’s house, head held high, a note of confidence in her thought-speak that told him that maybe she wasn’t all that in control of the morph, maybe she, like him, drew confidence from the animals they became. Peace and freedom he had never felt before in the body of a hawk, fearlessness like she’d never reached in the cat, the elephant, the bear.
That first time, he watched her disappear into the house alone, and for a terrible moment, he thought, what if something happens? Rachel, the girl who nailed a birdhouse underneath her bedroom window for him, even though red-tailed hawks don’t frequent birdhouses. The girl who for some reason, unbeknownst to him, had met his fierce hawk gaze that first day they all found out he’d been trapped in morph and said, with unwavering faith, “We’ll fix it, Tobias.” He watched her walk towards Chapman’s house and thought that if anything happened, a world without Rachel in it would be so much emptier, so much lonelier. And so he told her, Be careful, Rachel.
Always am.
Weeks later, when she was a fish in his talons about to be dropped into a lake to swim up into a spaceship (he had to admit Marco had a point - their lives had become insane), she said her own version of it back.
Hey Tobias?
Yeah?
Be careful out here. Don’t let them dracon you, or whatever.
It became something they did, second-nature. He was grateful for the mechanisms of thought-speak, for the private conversations he could have with her in front of everyone else, thoughts they shared with each other but wouldn’t share with the others. Jokes during missions, concerns, worries, and always, anytime they separated:
Be careful, Rachel.
You too, Tobias.
At least when he got his morphing back, he could join her. He didn’t have to watch as she disappeared from his hawk vision, into somewhere he couldn’t follow - dolphins under the sea, ants in Chapman’s house, cockroaches in a Sharing meeting. At least then he wasn’t always watching on the outside. At least then, he could stay with her until the battles, and right before, he could whisper:
Be careful, Rachel.
You too, Tobias.
Tobias thought it was like their own, altered version of what normal couples do, albeit his only understanding of normal couples was gleaned from the sitcoms that him and Ax watched on TV. Their own version of “drive safe” or “get home safe,” but different because they weren’t a normal couple, they were a bird-boy and a girl, they were two messed up kids in the middle of a messed up war that nobody had asked to be a part of. Marco always said that Rachel liked the war, that she was meant for it, but Tobias knew better. He saw her, late at night, slumped over her homework with bags upon bags underneath her eyes. He watched the way she let her guard down at home, when it was just him and her in the quiet of her bedroom. She was just as afraid as the rest of them. She was just playing a part.
He saw how scared she was, pumped full of fear, when he was caught by Taylor, when she fell off his body and screamed, cried, in silent thought-speak. Didn’t even bother to say, Be careful , and in that moment, Tobias worried it was the end. It wasn’t, though. In her room that night, later, after she kissed him on the beach, she said it over and over again, "You’ve got to be careful, Tobias. I don’t care what Jake tells you to do. I don’t care. That’s not going to happen to you again." He breathed a sigh of relief. They still had more time. But not much. Not enough, never enough.
Over the years, those two words changed - so much more emotion was pumped into them, more fear, more exhaustion. In the end, her Always am became self-mocking, because when was she ever careful, anymore? She was brutal, brilliant, a warrior. But she wasn’t careful. In the end, meant: You’re my home, Rachel, you have to live. Be careful, meant: You’re the only thing that grounds me, Tobias, don’t do anything stupid.
He never did get to say it, that last time. If he’d known where she was going, he wouldn’t have bothered - he would have gone down, kicking and screaming against it, he would have begged Jake to send him instead, to send anyone else but Rachel. He would have told Jake that a world without Rachel was too terrible to fathom, he would have morphed hork bajir and tackled Rachel to the ground, just to keep her safe.
But nobody could keep Rachel safe. She was a raging storm, she was a force to be reckoned with, and when she agreed to something, when she made her mind, nobody, not even Tobias, could stop her.
He never got the chance. By the time he knew where she was, Be careful, was a moot point. How could she be careful, when Jake had sent her to die?
In the end, Be careful, meant "I love you;” it meant, "The world would cease without you;" it meant, "Don’t you dare get away from me." And so, her final words to him were Be careful stripped down to the bone: “I love you.” And his final words to her were a plea: “Rachel, Rachel, no, please, Rachel!”