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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 4 years

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After the Bombs Fall [Animorphs ficlet]

[Note: I seem to have lost the ask where someone requested my post-war headcanon for Alloran, but anyway here it is.]

Less than a month after the end of the war, Alloran applies for transfer off of Earth and back to the homeworld. When the first request gets cancelled due to a minor typo in a sub-section of a supplemental form, he curses himself and immediately applies again.

The second application lingers in the metaphorical z-space between agents for longer, nearly two Earth months, before it gets cancelled as well. The systems are overtaxed due to the sudden influx of Earth tourism, the form letter tells him this time, and they’re very sorry for their inability to accommodate his request.

The third time he applies, the form remains “under review” on the submission portal for half a year, even though the review process normally takes less than a day. So he applies a fourth time, a terrible suspicion taking hold by now. The Electorate automatically cancels both applications, and has the gall to send him a snippy comm message asking that he refrain from filing redundant claims from now on.

The fifth application gets reviewed and cancelled; the sixth one doesn’t even get that courtesy. It just stays there, “submitted” but not yet “under review,” unwanted and ignored.

Just like its author.

Alloran considers, then. For nearly a day he paces, watching the andalite computer and the primitive human device alike, and weighs the merits of stealing Visser Three’s Blade ship out of the impound lot. It wouldn’t be hard; the security system is coded to biometrics. No one but he or Tom Berenson could fly that ship now, and Tom Berenson is dead.

After another day, Alloran instead morphs human and walks to the nearest CVS.

He has to swallow an entire jumbo bag of marshmallows and three jars of tomato sauce for comfort before he can swallow his pride as well. But the comfort food does its trick, and at the end he pulls out the human cell phone still registered under one of Esplin 9466′s aliases and enters the fifth speed-dial option.

“Hey, you.” Eva answers immediately. “How’s it going?”

They don’t know each other, not really. And yet in every one of their three conversations, Eva has greeted him like an old friend. Her voice brings a reaction to Alloran’s human morph: tightness in his throat, the heat of tears behind his eyes.

“I apologize for troubling you,” Alloran says stiffly. “Please, if you are busy, disregard this request.”

Eva snorts a laugh. At least, Alloran thinks that that’s what the sound is. “I’m not busy, and I owe you a favor anyway. Shoot.”

Alloran glances around the room, but there are no weapons, so he decides to disregard that last. “I am truly sorry if it slipped my mind,” he says, “but what favor do you owe?”

“My kid is not in jail on some foreign planet right now, and I hear that’s all your fault. What’s the favor?”

“The War Council would not have imprisoned the Animorphs. That is, perhaps Aximili and Prince Jake may have been imprisoned, but doubtless the full Electorate court would have proven merciful—”

“Alloran. What’s the favor.”

He’s stalling, and she knows it. “It’s a bit of a complicated political matter, and I’m afraid I am not well equipped to explain it to a human, but enforcement of our travel policies is more subject to individual agents’ personal judgment than we ideally would have it be, and...”

“Hijo de puta. They’re not letting you go home, are they?”

Alloran fills his human lungs with more air than they technically need for speech. “It’s a complicated matter.” Nevertheless, his voice comes out small.

“You still camping at the Sharing Community Center?”

“Yes.” His voice is even smaller now.

“I’ll be there in half an hour, querido.” She hangs up.

While he waits, he goes outside to run, to graze, to stare up at the stars.

He didn’t lie; it is complicated. The Andalite Electorate is struggling to recover from a decades-long war, one that threatened the existence of their very soul as a people. Seerow’s mistakes — and Alloran’s own decision to publicize the failings of his prince — have ensured that the whole debacle was a massive embarrassment even before the defeat on the hork-bajir homeworld.

And then...

He’s heard the word, whispered and hissed and screamed and shouted.

Abomination.

His face is the public face of the Yeerk Empire. His voice is its voice. The morph he was just using — a bald, middle-aged human male — was constructed from the DNA of a dozen human-controllers. Everything he owns, from the black limousine parked at the curb to the press pass of a woman called Aria, was taken from the hands of murdered slaves.

Of course his people don’t want him back. Of course not. The quantum virus was one thing, but then he had the gall go to and get himself captured by the yeerks. And he’d added insult to injury when he’d challenged a captain on Aximili’s behalf.

He can see it. That’s what stings. He can stare up at the glittering point of his home star even as he runs across a field of dull foreign grass, and at this rate it’ll never be anything but a fixed point of light in an unfamiliar sky ever again.

Eva shows up then, before he can feel too sorry for himself.

She brings a human substance known as pinot noir.

**********

“And then...” Eva points a wavering finger at him. Her words have gotten blurrier over time. “And then, we just sneak it in, and bam!” She slaps the tabletop.

Alloran leans in across to her. “Bam,” he agrees.

“You needed a ride home?”

At the new voice, Alloran stands up sharply. Too sharply. He gets his two flimsy little legs tangled in the chair and almost pitches over.

Marco catches him. “You all right?” he asks.

“I,” Alloran intones, “am intoxicated. Tox. I. Cate. Ed. Wonderful word. Intock. Sick. Kate. Dd-d-d-d-d.”

“Yeeeaah, I was getting those vibes from the—” Marco leans around him in an impressive display of human balance. “Bottle of wine apiece you two’ve apparently emptied.”

Eva draws herself up. “I did not call and request a ride home, I called and requested a ride to the Netherlands!”

“You’re right, you did.” Marco rolls his eyes. “Which is why I made the decision to show up and bring you home instead.”

“No, no, the Netherlands.” Eva steps up next to Alloran. They both regard Marco carefully. “Not to worry, we’ve thought it through. You call your friend with the private plane, Bradley or Bradford or whomever his name is. We fly out to the Hague tonight.”

“Where is this going,” Marco mutters.

“Holland,” Alloran informs him. “It is-sssss in...”

“Yeah, I’ve been.”

“Anyway.” Eva gestures sharply, bringing attention back to her. “We shall have a perfectly ordinary canister of table salt with us, and we shall request to visit with Visser Three—”

“Oh Jesus. Mom.”

“The guards will not suspect a thing, for it is just an ordinary condiment. All we must then do is create a diversion, and...” Eva flings out both hands as if miming an explosion.

“Splat,” Alloran says. “Pllll-lat. Hissssss.”

“And this will accomplish what, exactly?” Marco asks.

“Making Alloran feel better,” Eva whispers to him. However, she seems to be whispering a great deal louder than she realizes. Humans are ill-equipped for private communication, with their sad reliance on verbal speech. “None of the andalites want him back.”

“Yeah. Cool.” Marco laughs. “Ten out of ten therapists recommend war crimes for a friend in need! And as a guy who’s been to at least ten therapists, I’d know.”

Alloran is not certain, but he believes that Marco might be employing the human verbal quirk known as “sarcasm.”

“No one will suspect a thing.” Eva pats him on the shoulder.

Marco sighs. “Security will just think it’s cocaine.”

“Cocaine?” Alloran asks. “Coke-cane? Co-c-c-c-c-c-c-aine?”

“Something you’re never going to try.” Marco levels a hard stare at him. “Given how well you handle your red wine.”

“Cooo-caaayyy-nnnee. Co-cane.”

“How did you get wrapped up in this dumbass heist, anyway?” Marco looks from one of them to the other.

“Alloran needed me,” Eva says.

“I have no friends,” Alloran announces. “And Arbron does not own a cell phone. Ell. Elffffff-own.”

Marco closes his main eyes for several seconds, massaging the bridge of his nose. An impressive feat of daring, for a creature with no stalk eyes who relies upon bipedalism. “Should’ve known you’d be a morose drunk,” he says.

“So, you’ll take us to the airfield, then?” Eva asks.

Lifting his head up, Marco opens his eyes. “In the words of my wise and estimable mother: if you want it that bad, you can have it when you’re sober.”

Eva opens her mouth halfway, squinting in what Alloran would guess is the effort of remembering when she would have said that. After a second, her expression clears. “I was right to say it, that floozy would have broken your heart in the morning, and this situation is entirely different!”

“That floozy’s name was Jake Gyllenhaal,” Marco mutters, “and I totally would’ve gone for it when I was sober, but I never got his number.”

Eva says something in Spanish, presumably about the loose morals of Jake Gyllenhaal. Marco’s expression would suggest that he only pretends not to understand her.

“Anyway. The point stands. I’m driving you home.” Marco jerks his chin at Eva. “And you,” he says, looking at Alloran, “are gonna morph and sober up before we go anywhere. I’m not having you nothlited on my conscience.”

“But,” Alloran says, “the salt—”

“We’ll revisit the salt in the morning,” Marco says firmly. “Demorph. Please.”

Alloran considers pointing out that he is a war-prince, he does not take orders from alien children, he has his pride... And then considers whether any of those statements is actually true.

He demorphs.

Instantly, he feels both better and worse. On the upside he’s more clear-headed now, but on the downside he’s more clear-headed.

“I’ll call you.” Marco gives him a long look while shepherding Eva out the door.

**********

Marco does not call, but he does send several written missives to Alloran’s cell phone. The Animorphs still have an illegal andalite communication device, it would appear, and Marco has put in requests to channels both official and not about the possibility of transport from Earth to the homeworld.

—Ax is on it, Marco’s latest text reads. —He’s calling an old friend. Might take some smuggling, but we’ve got an idea.

—Thank you, Alloran types carefully on the tiny keyboard. —Your assistance is greatly appreciated, and undeserved.

He’s debating whether to hit send when there’s a knock on the door.

Alloran’s in an abandoned building the Sharing used to use for housing human-controllers. There is very little chance that this is an incidental knock, or someone who wandered by accidentally.

The thought occurs to him that it’d be smarter to morph human and blend in before he answers. But the fear of facing the unknown in a half-blind, tailless morph wins out. He opens the door as is.

It proves to be the right decision. The andalite on the other side didn’t bother to morph either.

Estrid stares at him in silence for several seconds. Her expression is unreadable, all eyes ahead and carefully blank. Alloran doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but he lets her look.

«Estrid,» he says at last, when it’s clear she isn’t going to speak first. He gestures with his tail blade, the downward sweep of greeting for an honored warrior.

«Father,» she says.

Her own sharp tail-turn puts the flat of her blade toward him. A greeting between equals. An insult. Both not formal enough for an aristh to acknowledge a war-prince, and too formal for greeting a family member.

But then, Alloran went for Estrid, didn’t he. Not Aristh Estrid-Corill-Darrath, not Estri-kala or my child.

They haven’t seen each other in over two years. They haven’t spoken in almost twenty.

Arguably, given how young she was when he was taken, they’ve never really spoken at all. Certainly Alloran knows little of the person his daughter has become as a young adult. As a groundbreaking aristh. As a brilliant researcher.

As a war criminal.

Humans have a saying, about apples that don’t fall far.

«How is Jahar?» Alloran says. It’s what he really wants to know, and he doesn’t know how to approach any of the other minefields that lie between them. «And Ajaht, how is he?»

Judging by Estrid’s expression, she takes this to be a standard small-talk opening instead of the deeply earnest inquiry it is. «Mother is well enough. I suppose you’ll have to apologize to her in person.» She doesn’t mention her brother.

Alloran feels his tail blade drop nearly to the floor without his permission. «Yes. Of course. Estrid...»

«I’m on a diplomatic mission to Earth,» she says briskly. «Prince Aximili and I have concluded discussions with several local leaders about access to morphing technology and tourism restrictions going forward. Therefore, I will be able to exit the planet and return home after being subject to nothing more rigorous than human security scans.» The dismissive little flick of her tail at this last is, all things considered, somewhat warranted. Humans have yet to devise a single effective way to detect morphers.

«Return home,» Alloran repeats.

Might take some smuggling, Marco said. It’s sinking in: Estrid is here to bring him home.

Home. To the wife he disgraced. The brother he got killed. The children who won’t even acknowledge him, a feverish pair of overachievers desperate to leave his legacy behind. Ajaht’s tail-fighting is so legendary that, even using human channels, Alloran has been able to find scraps of news. Estrid’s skill is not praised so publicly... but the yeerks got ahold of Arbat’s files, after their disastrous mission to Earth. Alloran knows more about her, he thinks, than he ever wanted to.

«We’re leaving now,» Estrid says. «My window for authorized exit ends in two-point-eight-six Earth hours, so we need to move.»

She must have been here for days if not weeks, to negotiate the way she’s describing. And yet she came to find him at the last possible second. Likely to minimize the time they’re forced to spend together.

Alloran doesn’t have the time or the energy to care. «What would you prefer me to morph?»

«Something small and Earth-based.» She barely finishes speaking before she starts to morph herself.

Alloran pauses in surprise, because Estrid morphs with shocking skill, melding from andalite to human in a mere forty-seven seconds, all without ever once losing her footing. She even wears a normative amount of clothing when she’s finished, a sundress and sneakers and a coat overtop.

She sighs, looking him over. «We don’t have all day, here.��

«You were wasted in Arbat’s lab,» Alloran says.

«You don’t have to tell me that,» Estrid snaps. «Tell me, dear father, what else was a girl and a second-born and the child of a disgraced bloodline meant to do?»

Alloran has no answer. Silently he morphs.

His options are limited — Visser Three overwhelmingly preferred large to small morphs, and Alloran hasn’t bothered acquiring much else — so he opts for snake, Lachesis muta according to a human-controller from the area. It’s still larger than most Earth reptiles, but by coiling in close he becomes small enough to drop into the oversized pocket of Estrid’s jacket.

Estrid doesn’t speak to him, and he doesn’t ask her to, the entire way back to her fighter. She’s under no obligation, and he won’t force the issue.

********

«We’re landing soon,» Estrid tells him, three Earth weeks and eighty-two light years later. She’s maintained that icy formality throughout the entire journey so far, responding to Alloran’s questions — about her research, about her brother, about her morphing — with flat non-answers.

Alloran steps to the viewport to look out over the rolling grasslands of home like a child on his first in-atmosphere flight. Is it home, really? It’s been thirty-nine years since he left home to quell the small skirmish on the hork-bajir homeworld, forty-seven since his first offworld assignment serving under Prince Seerow. He has seen a dozen planets, been a hundred species, since that time. This body belonged to Visser Three for nearly as long as it did to Alloran himself, decades of nonexistence until he all but forgot his own name.

«What will you do next?» Alloran asks Estrid, still desperate for conversation.

She flicks a dismissive hand at the air. «I have my work.»

«Even without Arbat?»

«I didn’t say it was easy.»

«And the quantum virus?»

She turns all four eyes on him. A small part of him wants to scold her for bad form, but a far larger part of him recognizes he’d be overstepping. «The quantum virus never happened,» she says sharply. «And if it did, I was never informed of its existence. This journey was my first visit to Earth, Arbat died in a lab accident, we were never involved in weapons development, and if you even think about saying differently the War Council will back my story, because all of the documentation —»

«Estrid.» He cuts her off as gently as he can. «I would never...»

He sees it, in the stiffening of her stalk eyes. Hears it in the catch of her breath. She doesn’t want a father. Or if she does, she doesn’t want him.

«I would never dishonor the memory of my brother by raising questions about his death,» Alloran says instead.

Estrid relaxes, and turns back to the controls.

He is weary of war, weary of being alone. The person he’d been when he first met Esplin 9466 would have been shouting by now, demanding to know what right Estrid has to consider herself any better than him. He only deployed a quantum virus, had no hand in its evil creation. Either she is a hypocrite... or she is just like the War Council officials who consider it a far worse crime to be enslaved by yeerks than to have murdered ten million hork-bajir.

It’s been a long war, and Alloran has missed her every moment of it. Let her be angry; she’s here.

There is one more delicate question Alloran needs to ask, however, before they disembark on their family’s land. «Jahar,» he says. «I assume... She has found someone else. To help raise you, and...» Dark Sun, but this is hard. «She deserves to be loved, of course.»

Eva’s mate remarried, after all. Together they’d cried about that, somewhere between the third and fourth glasses of wine.

«Who would date her?» Estrid asks. «Who would be seen speaking to her? No. There’s no one. There hasn’t been. There was me, and Ajaht, and that’s it.»

Alloran feels sadness and relief and disappointment and shame at his relief, all at once in a rush too complex to understand. «I see,» he says at last.

«So go to her.» Estrid yanks hard to unseal the fighter’s outer door; they’ve landed without his noticing. «Go to her and—» Another hard yank. «Kriffing thing!»

Alloran puts his hand next to hers, pleasantly surprised when she doesn’t pull away. As one they move, and the door comes open at last.

She came to meet them. Alloran doesn’t know why he wasn’t expecting that, and yet...

Jahar is older, lined around the eyes and stooped in her shoulders and dull-edged around her hooves. She’s radiant. Transcendent.

Alloran is frozen. Aware of all the knocks he’s taken, all the shine he’s lost. Aware that they’ve been apart for longer than they ever were together.

He blames that last for the way his knees lock. For the voice that freezes inside his mind, unable to form words. For the crack in his breath and the painful squeeze of his hearts as she becomes the one to step forward. As she raises a hand to his cheek, in the first gentle touch he’s felt in over twenty years.

[Note: I know that Aloth’s line in #38 about Estrid being Arbat’s niece — which would make her Alloran’s daughter — is probably not meant to be literal in context. But the straightforward interpretation is boring, so I went with the fun one.]

#animorphs #animorphs fic #long post #ficlet #alloran #alloran is my trash baby #animorphs spoilers #victim blaming #estrangement #alloran semitur corass #Estrid Corill Darrath #alloran is estrid's dad #actual dumpster fire alloran semitur hardass #star wars swear words #cold mountain... in space!

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