Tear Jerker / All Assorted Animorphs AUs

• "What if they were caught during their first mission?"
  • At the start, Jake blames himself for letting everyone get captured.
  He’s vaguely aware that there are tears running down his face, but he tries his hardest to tune out everything except some possible way to get them all out of this.
  • Tobias' fate may be the most horrific of all. He promises Rachel that they'll live and fight another day, but he lets himself be killed after two hours of torture, long before he has a chance to escape.
• At the end of "What if they rescued Alloran in #8?", Jake asks Alloran for a "terrible favour". He responds:
  Alloran: <My brother, Arbat, tried to kill me not long after I was taken by the yeerks. I felt gratitude, and relief, and the wish that he would succeed. Not just for his own sake, or for the sake of our ancestors. For the sake of my Jahar, and the daughter I never knew except as a wish-flower. And for my own sake as well. It was a gesture of mercy, driven by love, and I recognized it as such.>
• Peter is even more depressed in "What if Marco was Deaf?" than in canon at first. He spends all day staring listlessly at the television and barely pays attention to Marco.
• At the end of "What if they saved Jake's family?", Eva hugs Jake just before they're incinerated by a Dracon cannon.
• "What if the Animorphs could use magic?" has its Ghost Reunion Ending. Jake admits that he's scared of dying, is horrified to discover that Ax is already dead, and he's on the verge of tears when he hears Tom's voice.
• "What if Rachel's mom was a controller?" is brutal to Rachel's family. Rachel is Promoted to Parent at age thirteen, reveals to Sara and Jordan what's become of their mother after her amnesiac daze from the Veelek attack leaves them alone for several days, and forces both of them to memorize an emergency plan in case Rachel and the others are captured or killed. Sara kills David mid-morph before he can threaten her and Jordan, and Rachel gives the others only enough detail for them to assume she did it. In the end, Naomi is freed, but her daughters are too broken to subconsciously accept her as a parent again.
  There will be other moments, after this one. Moments when Naomi finds that Sara runs to Rachel, not to her, when in tears over a math assignment or an early bedtime. Moments when Jordan will laugh outright when Naomi tells her to go to her room. Moments when she’ll discover that there is no sheltering Rachel, not anymore, and maybe there’s no need to parent her either. Moments when it will become clear that Rachel is her own woman, long since, independent and fierce and calloused and scarred.
• "What if the yeerks got to Ax before the Animorphs did?" sees Marco go through with his early-series decision to quit the team, since Ax's absence means that they never carry out the mission that leads to him learning his mother is alive as Visser One's host; he spends the next several months avoiding the others until they do encounter Visser One and Jake tells him about her, causing him to break down and then reluctantly rejoin the team. And then they all end up dying when they end up on the Ascalin and the lack of Ax to vouch for them leads to them being Thrown Out the Airlock. Meanwhile, Ax is shown in a cage in the Yeerk pool, emotionally broken and unable to do anything except wait to be infested again.

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