I get irrationally upset when people imply that there was no other end for Rachel but to die at the end of the series; that she would not have survived without the fight, the thrill, the adrenaline, that it’s her “true end”. 

Rachel didn’t want to die. Rachel wanted to live. Rachel saw a future for herself beyond the end of the war. She had a family. She had friends. She was in love.

She was just a sixteen year old kid who had been fighting nonstop for the past three years. Who had done terrible things to protect her friends. She was a sixteen year old kid who walked to her death when asked because more than anything, she wanted the war to be over and for humanity to be free.

Were there parts of her unearthed by the war that were ugly and brutal? Yes. Could she have gone back to the life she lived before the war? No. But all of the Animorphs struggled with what the war forged them into. And none of them ever went back, not all the way.

But there would have been a life for her afterwards, and happiness, and peace. I wish she had gotten her chance at them. She deserved it.