A/N: I know you guys are smart enough to figure this out, but just to avoid confusion, everything in italic's is a flashback sequence.

Epilogue

"In my end is my beginning." -T.S. Eliot

(My name is Terenia.)

I spoke as loudly as my thought-speak voice would allow. I was in the loading bay of a Blade Ship. My Blade Ship. It was the only area large enough to hold the crowd standing before me.

I woke up alone on Jennor’s fighter. Alone, save Rekora whose body I still miraculously possessed. Alone and, more importantly, alive. Jennor must have turned her tail blade at the last moment. How she got aboard the Dome Ship, how she managed to keep me alive and away from the Andalite’s I do not know.

(Earth is lost. The Empire has fallen. The Council of Thirteen has disbanded.) The crowd in front of me was vast, but not nearly vast enough.

I sent out an encrypted signal for Agrath. As soon as she received it I was welcomed aboard my old ship. My crew was bitter and scared. But they were alive. Agrath had hidden well from the Andalite forces.

(Visser One’s Blade Ship has escaped into Zero-Space, with an unknown number of traitorous Yeerks.)

After I was back on my familiar ship I went to my room. I needed to be alone, to think. I needed to ponder the life I had almost escaped, but seemed unable to leave behind.

(The remaining Yeerks are either members of the Peace Movement – also traitors to the Empire – or will die of Kandrona starvation.) There was a grumble of dissent from the crowd. As the cause of our failure had been pieced together the Peace Movement became one of the well-known perpetrators. They were high on our growing list of enemies.

I had stayed in my quarters for a long time. The Yeerks needed me, Agrath said. She told me that she could not lead them alone. They would not listen to one Hork-Bajir assassin. I told her to let me be.

(In this moment, the darkest hour of our kind, we must stay strong.)

While I was in my stupor, Agrath was not idle. She searched the solar system and nearby galaxies, gathering as many rogue Yeerk ships to her as possible. At the end of her labors we had almost two hundred Yeerks, and a small fleet. We even had a Blade Ship.

(We must rally together. We cannot be weakened by our peace-loving brothers, who are convinced that there is another way. We cannot be led astray by human and Andalite promises.) The crowd in front of me nodded in agreement. Gedd, Hork-Bajir, Taxxon, and human hosts, all gathered together.

In my room I found little comfort. Rekora was as beaten as I. She moaned and cried pitifully, until the noise became nothing more than static from a bad radio. Background noise. Nothing noise.

(This is a huge loss, but we are not defeated! We are strong, and we can rebuild!)

I don’t know why I decided to do it. I had acquired the morph long ago. It wasn’t exactly difficult to acquire. My front legs disappeared, my fur sucked back into my body. My stalk eyes and my beloved tail, both gone. After a few minutes I was myself. Or rather, I was Tammy, my twin sister. I stood there, naked. I flexed my fingers and moved my mouth in a sort of distant fascination. It had been so long.

(We are the few, the loyal, the faithful. We are the ones who will reap the benefits of a galaxy where the Yeerk Empire rules all.) Agrath stood beside me, a rueful smile on her face. She was letting me do all the talking. I was to be their formal leader. After all, they needed someone to blame, to hate, if things went wrong. I was used to people hating me.

I felt a bubble of emotion well up inside of me. Emotion which an Andalite body could not physically react to. My human body could. I clenched my fists, resisting for a moment, before it washed over me like a tidal wave. I fell to my knees, letting out a sob of anguish.

The crowd let up a brief cheer. They had been beaten down, but they were not defeated yet. The Yeerks have a strange instinct to give up when things seem hopeless. My human desire to keep going no matter what was trying to counteract that. It seemed to be working.

Sob after sob ripped itself from my throat. It had been so long since I had been able to cry. Been able to use my mouth let the world know how I felt. I cried for eight years of terror and loss. I cried for my innocence, for my youth. And in my head, Rekora cried for her freedom.

(We are not weak.) I went on, driving the point home. (We are not our host bodies. We are not cannibalistic Taxxons, or stupid Hork-Bajir, or destructive humans. Or pompous Andalites.)

When my cries finally silenced I lay there, feeling like an empty husk of my former self. Slowly I pulled myself up to my two slightly wobbly feet. I began to demorph. As I shed my human form and became more and more Andalite I felt ashamed of my display of weakness. There was a familiar wisp of fire in the core of my being. I was still here, still alive to make endless mistakes and sacrifices. Jennor hadn’t even tried to attack me. She had let me fight to the point of exhaustion, and hadn’t even put me out of my misery.

(We are not fools. We are smart; we are just as adaptable as the human bodies we claim!)

I took a deep breath, steadying myself. The long-held tears were gone now. It was like I was a wet rag. All of the unnecessary bits of me had been rung out. The tears and the uncertainty and pain. Like a damp rag, small bits remained, but it no longer held me captive. My goals were clear. I had to kill Jennor. She had humiliated me. I had to help Agrath regroup the Yeerks. Together we had to take the place of Visser One and the Council.

I looked around at the cheering crowd. At Agrath’s greedy smile. At this small yet effective empire I had before me. I was surrounded by Yeerks with no choice but to put their faith in me. By human’s and other aliens who were slaves to me. And one Andalite girl who I could crush with ease. I had never been less alone in my life. Never had I had more people paying attention to me.

And yet, loneliness was aching in my bones. In my minds eye images formed. An image of two young identical sisters, sharing secrets in bed late at night. Of two juvenile Andalites running, prancing through the grass of an alien homeworld which had ceased to seem so alien. Of laughing and slashing my tail through the air for the pure joy of it, no voices in my head to hinder me.

(We are the Yeerks.) I repeated, keeping my voice steady. (And we will rise again!)

I turned around and left the crowd, even as they cheered louder still in their alien voices. I left them to celebrate their own dreams of a prosperous future. I walked through the empty Blade Ship and returned to my room. Alone.

Jennor was still out there somewhere, being a hero. I wondered what she would do now that the war was over. If she would continue to fight, or return to the homeworld. It didn’t matter. I would do whatever it took to find her. To make her pay. But first…well, first I had the shattered remains of an Empire to put back together.

I am part human, part Andalite, and part Yeerk. I am not like you. I am not like anyone. I am alone in the galaxy.

I am Terenia. And I will always be alone.

A/N: Well, that's all she wrote. I apologize to those of you who were hoping for a nice, clean ending. Unfortunately life only wraps itself up neatly in fairy tales, and this was far from a fairy tale. I did, of course, leave room open for a sequel if the demand is high. In the meantime, I will be working on other Animorph related projects, so keep an eye out for my name!

Thank you once again for all of my faithful readers and reviewers. A special shout out goes to the Animorphs Fanfic Lounge, whose board inspired me to pick this story back up again after almost a year of neglect. It took seven years, but I'm done! THANK YOU!

-T.

Final Stats:
24 Chapters + Prologue + Epilogue
63,460 Words
Reading View: 261 pages
Print View: 146 pages