Title: "Cassie's Heroes"
Author: Pirate Turner
Rating: PG
Summary: Sometimes, a girl has to protect her heroes, and sometimes, she just needs to be able to be a girl for a little while longer.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, names, codenames, places, items, fandoms, titles, and etc. are always © & TM their respective owners, not the author, and are used without permission. Any and all original characters and everything else is © & TM the author and may not be reproduced in any way without the author's express, written permission. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: 244. That's the number of stories that were sitting on my hard drive collecting dust because I lack the energy and time to take care of them as I once did. My betaing pattern has always been to write, then type up if written on paper, the story, read it aloud to my beloved Jack and our children, editing as I go, and then finally format and post. Sadly, this part is simply taking too much of my time and energy, and my beloved Jack and I have too little time together in person these days to be able to keep up with my stories. So what to do? Give up writing? I actually considered it for a while, tried to make excuses to myself other than the large number of stories collecting cyber dust on my computer, as to why I lacked the energy and Muse to write new tales. And then, with the turn of the new year, I decided to stop running and face the problem. The problem is, quite frankly, that once one gets so bogged down in formatting and editing that writing is no longer a pleasure but the actual posting of those writings becomes a hassle and - egad! - work, it's time to cut something out, and that will never be the writing process. So, in short, yes, there will be mistakes in this tale. Yes, it's missing about half of the header information I usually include. But I wrote it for pleasure and am posting it in hopes of sharing that pleasure with others. Do with it as you will.
She knew she should be with them. Guilt weighed heavily upon Cassie as she walked through the kitchen in which she'd spent so many happy childhood moments baking cookies with her mom and playing checkers at their kitchen table with her father. She remembered every moment she'd spent with them here as she worked, but she recalled, too, the mission over which her friends were grappling. She should be there with them in the barn, checking on the animals and voicing her own opinions, but she already knew how the debate would end.
There wasn't really any other choice but to follow through with Rachel's latest, life risking plan. There was no more choice in what they were about to do than there had been when they'd found the dying Andalite's spacecraft and first learned of the existence of the Yeerks. They couldn't turn a blind eye to what they'd learned for the safety of their world.
It wasn't just the Earth's population at large that kept them from ignoring their duty and waiting for some one else to come fight a war that shouldn't be battled by kids. It was more deeply and closer than that. Cassie'd often thought that she might be able to ignore the Yeerks and go back to living her regular, normal life if it had just been the outside humans who were at risk. Yet, even if the animals she loved wouldn't be hurt by the destruction of their world, there were two for whom Cassie would do anything, give anything, and risk anything.
The little, black girl whose parents still thought of her as a kid, though she'd been forced to kill, wiped the tears from her eyes and lifted her chin all by herself. The meeting would have to go on without her. She needed this. She had to have it. She lifted the tray, loaded with coffee, pancakes, the morning newspaper, and roses, and headed for her parents' room.
She needed just a few moments in this awful world, made that way by the Yeerks' infestation, for everything to be normal. She needed to forget, for just a little while, why she fought and remember, instead, why it was so important and so great to love. Cassie wouldn't admit it aloud to any of the others, but she needed to be what she should be - a daughter, a little girl - for just one more time before facing the latest impossible mission of the Animorphs from which it was far too likely that none of them would return.
She wiped away a few more tears and squared her thin shoulders determinedly as she fixed her mask back into place. She couldn't let her parents know what was happening. The others all believed that you couldn't tell who had a Yeerk in their head and who didn't. She could understand, even almost completely agree with their belief. After all, Jake's brother was a host. But she would always know her parents.
She didn't tell them what was really happening in her life any more not because she was afraid they might be Yeerks. No, she knew what would happen if she told them, and that was the very reason why she didn't. Her parents were more than just her parents. They, like the Animorphs, were her best friends, but they were also her heroes. She'd never once known either of her parents to turn away some one who needed help, and they'd been saving lives for as long as Cassie could remember - not from aliens, of course, but from threats no less dangerous for the animals who suffered them.
They'd rise to the cause again, Cassie knew, if they ever found out what was happening. They'd fight her battle for her, refuse to let her, their little girl, fight, and get themselves killed in the process of trying to save her and their world. She couldn't let that happen. She had to be their hero this time, even if it meant lying to them.
But Cassie didn't lie when she wished them a cheery, "Good morning!", upon entering their bedroom that morning. And she certainly didn't lie when she told them she loved them. She only wished, as she kept her tears expertly at bay, that they knew how much she'd always love them before the day came that she wouldn't come home.
The End