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<Rachel, I have a job for you.>
Now, those were words to burn into the inside of my head. My skin, maybe. The words that damned my soul to hell. That would make a killer tattoo.
Hah. Killer. That’s almost funny.
The war’s done, and I thought it would be better than this. I thought it would mean more to me.
I mean, everyone is free, and that’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad we won. People stop me in the mall and grasp my hands and tell me that they, or their friend or loved one, or whatever, had been a Controller, and they’re so grateful. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate how good the war ending is for these people.
But maybe they don’t appreciate how awful the war ending is for me.
My cousin dead, floating in space. Tom dead as well.
Sometimes I look in my mother’s eyes, and I know she doesn’t recognize the child she raised in my face.
Don’t know about Dad. He doesn’t look me in the eyes any more.
My name is Rachel Berenson.
My boyfriend is a hawk, and my best friend doesn’t talk to me anymore.
I drink with Marco, and I wish he didn’t understand me so well. We don’t mention those who have left, the leader I let go to his own death, or the alien who returned to the stars.
Marco and I are the public faces anyways. He’s better than I am at it, always the joker. But I’m getting endorsement deals and modelling jobs, and tolerating that gives me the money to stay independent. Nightmares were never fun, but I preferred it when Mom and my sisters didn’t know what they were about.
Everything just seems empty and hollow without the war in the background. Shopping, flying, everything, it was just meaningless.
When I was advised my presence at the trial of Visser One would be required, it was almost a relief. An echo of the war giving me a warm embrace, making me feel alive.
It was enough of a kick in the ass to make me do what I should have done much earlier.
Hedrick Chapman flinches violently at the sight of my blue eyes and blond hair and smiling mouth with lips pressed tightly together. I almost flinch at the sight of him. Part of me whispers that he’s dangerous, an enemy. I stick out my hand.
"Mr. Chapman. it’s nice to meet you again. It’s been a long time." I say quick before I lose my nerve.
He shakes my hand like if he jostles me too much I’ll erupt into bearish fury. “I’m not sure what you…”
"It wasn’t you for a long time, Mr. Chapman. I know that - we all did. It’s okay." I try to smile reassuringly, but I’m not so good at that anymore, and I’m still trying to keep my teeth tucked behind my lips. They itch like they’re morphing into fangs.
"Er- good. I mean, not good, but- well, it was a starting point for you kids, I suppose. Not a new fashion then, I suppose?" I blink and he smiles a little. "The bear feet."
I laugh and cover my mouth in sudden memory. What a desperate ploy. It’s a miracle we survived ‘til the end of the war.
Chapman invites me in and offered me tea. His wife looks surprised, but sits with us, and the conversation is weirdly pleasant. Talking about little things about life after the war, how they’re doing, the new school he’s at.
A break opens in the conversation, and my hands wrap around the warmth of the teacup. “Look, I came here for two reasons really. I’d like to talk to Melissa, but first- that night, near the beginning. After Elfangor… after we came on the scene. With Fluffer.” The cat in question is watching me from the top of a cabinet. “I was Fluffer. And I wanted to tell you both that what I saw that night, from both of you…” I take a deep steadying breath and look at them both in turn. “It was inspiring, and really powerful. You fought so hard for Melissa. It killed me that she didn’t know. I barely knew how rare host rebellion like that was, how hard it was. You’re amazing parents.”
Mrs. Chapman’s hand was on her husband’s arm, and they both had tears in their eyes. “Thank you,” Was all Mr. Chapman said.
Mrs. Chapman wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I noticed you never tried the same tactic again. My yeerk thought that it was just you being like the Visser, never trying the same trick twice. You stayed away from doing that, didn’t you?”
"We spied on Mr. Chapman a lot, and took information from his office. But we didn’t use Fluffer as a morph again. It was too risky." I hesitate, then add. "I wasn’t sure about the war then, but seeing how much it was hurting Melissa made me determined to do what I could. It’s debatable if that’s a good thing, but…"
"It’s not. it’s not debatable." Mr. Chapman said fiercely, meeting my eyes. "Rachel, I’m sorry our freedom came at the cost of your innocence, but you kept our daughter free. And then you won the war." He gets up and leans over, kisses my forehead. "You’re a hero. No matter what you did along the way."
I must have started morphing accidentally, because my vision went all blurry then.
Mrs. Chapman took pity on me then and led me to Melissa’s room. It still looked the way it did when we were thirteen, when I curled up on this bed with her as a cat. Exactly the same.
At the desk sat a girl with ash-blond hair to her waist, straight and soft. She looks at me with a soft, gentle smile, and she looks so …happy. She had nothing weighing on her anymore, no burdens, no doubts about the love of her parents.
She holds me when I start sobbing, and her mother leaves us alone.
Two days after I speak with the Chapmans, I arrive at the courthouse. It’s ridiculous, the media is swarming over it like-
"Ants in a turf war, aren’t they?" Marco asks me, shoulder-bumping me as he slots into place next to me. Tobias is sitting pretty on an actual hawk perch rented from a local hawker, placed on the side next to Cassie, who is on Marco’s other side and hasn’t said hello yet.
"Just what i was thinking."
The trial gets underway, and the opening statement from our end is pretty much what I expect. It lets me look at the box containing Visser Three, surrounded by lawyers. It’s a little tempting to hate them on sight, but I was raised by a lawyer, and no matter what I turn into, she’d whoop my butt for not knowing what a lawyer’s job is.
That doesn’t mean their words don’t hit home.
"…Up until that point, it was Jake Berenson who led the team, but that day, he went on a solo mission and died, leaving the leadership in Rachel Berenson’s hands. Where she went on to commit mass genocide by flushing seventeen thousand helpless sentient beings into space."
I flinch, I can’t help it. Marco grabs my arm, and I hear Tobias in my mind. <Steady, Rachel.>
It was my call. My decision.
Jake never would have done it.
At some point I end up on the stand. I don’t really pay attention to swearing in, or the first few questions. All that stays in my mind is being asked if I thought Jake would have earned a nickname like Rachel the Bloody.
Of course he wouldn’t, not something said by anyone other than Crayak and it’s cronies. Never something said to his face like that by a real human, something I could tell was being said behind my back in certain quarters. I feel the phantom stickiness of blood in my fur— on my skin. Jake would have made a better call if I’d convinced him to stay and lead and gone to kill Tom myself.
I know the lawyer is doing his job, but I’m filled with a hideous, awful rage, and I don’t know how I get through the questions, shoving my anger down behind my shattering mask of calmness.
All I know is it ends, and my friends rush me away.
Cassie slaps me. I blink and stare at her. “Hello to you too!” I snap, but there isn’t any real fire to it. We’re in some back room, tucked away from prying eyes.
"What was that?!"
"I- a trial, what do you think?" The first time we talk since the end of the war, and it’s a fight. Of course.
"You were falling apart up there!" Cassie shoves me and I have to fight not to escalate this because I will take it too far, I always take it too far.
"Well you fell apart when Jake died, so fair’s fair!"
"You didn’t stop him from going! You didn’t even tell me what he was doing!"
"He told me not to tell you!" I shout at her.
"You should have disobeyed him!" She screamed back.
"I WAS GLAD HE DIDN’T SEND ME!" I’m shouting and the words I never even dared to think before are out of my mouth and my eyes are wide and I’m backing away from a confrontation for the first time in a very long while.
"What?" Cassie said, caught between horror and rage.
"I- it was a dirty job, the worst job, and I was always the one to send for when the worst things needed to be done. And it was a suicide mission. And I would have done it. And I didn’t want to die, okay? Tom was his motivation, not mine. I didn’t want to die, so I just - I let him overrule me, and I did what he said. I hid his mission from you. And you never got to say goodbye and I’m sorry! But fuck me, Cassie, I wasn’t ready to- to not even have a chance to live! If he’d said so, I would have done it. But he didn’t."
I didn’t expect her to understand. It was her boyfriend after all, who went to his death without so much as a word of warning.
"Oh, Rachel…" Her voice is conciliatory and breaking and I can’t deal with it, I turn and flee the room, flee the courthouse, morphing as I run, peeling off the formal clothes to reveal the morphing costume I always wear underneath. I take flight the minute my last feather forms.
Tobias finds me later, but I veer away from him, refusing to talk.
My selfishness led to what was tantamount to a genocide. Led to us making Erek complicit in that genocide. Led to Jake, floating in space.
Jake would have finished the war so much cleaner than I did. I wish I’d argued with him more.