A/N: Well, this is my first posted Animorphs fanfiction. I loved this series when I was younger, and I've recently started reading through them again. As I read book #37, this little ficlet popped into my head. It's the aftermath of Rachel's leadership, as she and Cassie talk through what was done. I find Rachel a fascinating character, and I like to delve into her psyche.

Keep in mind that this is essentially plotless, which was why I was tempted to not post it in the first place. It's really a lot of conversation, and I think it's a sweet ending, but here's to hoping someone out there likes it.

Confronting Demons

The cool night air swept around me, caressing my every side It whipped above me and spiraled below, giving just the gentlest lift to my wings, and ruffling my feathers. Flying is the utlimate relaxtion—gliding miles above civilization, you are solitary, powerful, almost able to leave all your troubles behind you. Almost. For a little while.

Flying at night is a lot harder than flying during the day, though; without the day's warmth to provide thermals, there is nothing to help keep you aloft, so it comes down to brute physical exertion. On most days, that quickly grows tiresome, but tonight, the gentle aching in my muscles felt nice. The dull pain felt nice, working out some of the intense emotion swirling inside my muddled mind.

The city below was sparkling somewhat more dimly than it would have been earlier in the evening. Owls don't generally wear watches, so I couldn't say what time it was, but I knew it was late, late enough for most people to have turned out their lights by now. I believe it had been somewhere around midnight when I'd peeled of my pajamas and slipped into my morphing outfit to take flight. It was probably nearing one now, or even past. I'd been flying for a while, trying to lose myself in the gentle motions and the strangely gratifying ache in my wing muscles.

I'd had a very strange day, and I'd desperately needed some way to work it off. For some people, sleeping is good way to escape problems. A long time ago, I'd been one of those people, but that had changed when the nightmares began. Sleep ceased to be an escape from current problems and became instead a gateway to past scenes of horror. I sleep as little as I can now. And tonight, I knew, I would not close my eyes for even a moment.

I'd almost died today. I'd almost been infested. The very thought of the Yeerk slug that could be crawling around inside my head right now made my skin crawl. I could almost feel the heavy metal manacles around my legs again, weighing me down, trapping me, chafing beneath my fur, bloodying my skin.

It was terrifying to think of all the things that had nearly happened to me today. Minutes away from spending my life as a polar bear; feet away from spending my life as a Yeerk's slave; the slightest twitch away from being fried by a Hork-Bajir's Dracon beam.

And all because of my best friend's poor judgement.

Did I blame Rachel for leaping out the window and leaving me to the Visser's forces? Not in the slightest. She was wounded, badly so, and she'd already stayed behind to take more damage and allow us time to escape. She had looked around, but she was disoriented, and I'd been unable to call out to her. She's assumed all of us had escaped. Had she thought I was still trapped, she would have stayed with me, fought with me—died with me.

No, I would never blame her for her escape. I'm not sure blame is even an appropriate word to use. Blame, to me, implies anger, or resentment at the very least. I didn't feel any such thing toward her, and yet it could hardly be denied that the situation could be traced back to her. That it was her decision to lead us into that battle. That it was her cockiness and unwillingness to listen that had kept us from being prepared. That it was, in a word, her fault.

Rachel should never have led us. Marco had assumed that Tobias and I would have voted her into the role of leadership when we'd been about to vote for which of them would get the job. I was Rachel's best friend, Tobias her boyfriend, so in his eyes, the vote would never have been fair. What his usually sharp mind missed was that neither of us would have voted for Rachel. I can't speak for Tobias, but his silence says all that needs to be said. We love Rachel deeply, but we're close enough to her to understand that for all her good qualities, she is not cut out for a role of leadership. She's too aggressive, too reckless, too independent, too defensive. Immediately, she showed this assessment to be true. She came up with our most overt plan ever, went about it without a thought for possible complications, refused to accept anyone else's input, and got angry when one of us tried to make her listen. In a word, she showed all of her worst qualities at once. She made even me mad, which is a hard thing to do. If I'd never met her before today, I would probably have taken a great disliking to her.

And yet, as always, I could see her mask slip when she thought we weren't looking. I could see her well-buried sensitive side peek out for just a second here or there. I knew that she knew she'd screwed up. She'd covered it up with aggression, and she hadn't admitted it, but she knew. And it was tearing her apart.

So that was my destination as I flew that night: Rachel's house, to speak with her as I knew I had to. We'd talked briefly as she'd broken me out of the Yeerk pool, but it was all battle-related, all necessary communication. As soon as we were out, she had taken off with hardly a word. I knew her too well to be hurt; she was ashamed of herself, and she was retreating so that I wouldn't have to be in her prescence. I would just have to force my prescence on her. I didn't give a thought to the timing of my visit. It could have been three in the morning and Rachel wouldn't have been asleep; she sleeps less than I do, and her guilt was sure to have kept her up tonight. I just had to hope she hadn't decided to work out her aggression through flying, also.

I was in luck as I landed on her windowsill and peered in. She lay atop her bed in her darkened bedroom, staring silently up at the ceiling. Had I been in osprey morph, I would have thought she was asleep, she was so perfectly still, but the owl's eyes could see her clear as day. Feeling just the slightest bit of hesitation about what would soon be said (Rachel is not always the easiest person to talk to, at least not about her own feelings of inadequecy; it's usually a topic she steers away with considerable violence), I pecked the glass of the window a few times.

For a few moments she just sat there, the only noticeable change being a slight flinch and a few seconds where she didn't breathe. I could practically see the wheels turning in her head, deciding whether or not she could just pretend she was asleep until the person at her window went away. Clearly, she realized that was foolish, and she rolled off her mattress and walked over to the window, looking gorgeous even in her oversized tee shirt and touseled hair as only Rachel can.

Without even looking out the window, Rachel jerked it up and turned away. "Come in," she said softly, going back over to her bed and running her hand along the blanket, smoothing wrinkles away. Rachel is far from obsessive compulsive, so she was just looking for a distraction to avoid meeting my gaze.

I hopped inside, feeling not for the first time the strangeness of leading a life where it's typical for your friends to pay visits to your window late at night. As birds.

Mind if I demorph? I think my two hour limit's almost up, I said, hopping onto the floor and preparing to demorph even as I spoke.

I noticed Rachel stiffen almost imperceptibly and a moment later, she said, "Cassie."

Then I realized. You thought I was Tobias?

She shrugged, finally sitting and turning to look at me. "He's usually the one that comes tapping late at night."

Under different circumstances, you realize that I would mock you to the ends of the earth for that comment, don't you? I know you didn't mean it to sound dirty, but. . . . I tried some gentle teasing. Generally, that makes Rachel feel more comfortable. It's superficial and lighthearted, and a good way to break the ice.

Not tonight, though. "What are you doing here? It's late, I was sleeping."

I decided not to call her on her bluff. "Sorry," I said instead, getting my mouth back. "I thought it was a nice night for flying."

"And you came here?"

I cocked my head slightly to one side, now fully human. I was almost hurt by her coldness. She's usually a bit more open with me than with the others. I walked over and sat beside her on the bed, noticing how she moved just slightly away.

"Remember when we were little, and we'd sleep over at each other's houses every weekend?" I smiled at the memory, even though she was the one I was attempting to engage. "We'd switch over every time—one week I'd go to your house, and the next you'd come to mine. We stayed up all night talking. At your house, we'd raid the fridge and mock cheesy movies, and you'd force me to play dress up games. And –"

"And at yours you'd always make me tag along with you out to the barn where we'd play with the animals, practically until dawn. I would complain about how we could never just sit and do each other's hair like normal girls."

The smile on Rachel's face was slight, but it was there, and it encouraged me. "I miss that," I whispered.

The smile vanished. "It was a long time ago."

"It doesn't have to be."

"Yeah, Cassie, it does!" said Rachel, leaping to her feet suddenly. "We're not those little girls anymore. We're not sweet little kids that walk balance beams and play fetch with three-legged dogs! We're soldiers! We're killers! We have so much blood on our hands that we could paint this room with it! We can't have slumber parties and stay up talking about which guy is cute and what TV show is the most corny."

"Says who?"

Rachel shook her head in exasperation. "Cassie!"

"No, really," I argued. "Where is it written that we can't?"

Rachel stared at me with an odd expression. It was something of a cross between pity and admiration. "It doesn't have to be written, it's who we are! I love you, I do; I'm impressed that you've been changed as little as you have. You're still sweet, kind, and hopeful, and you still have some piece of innocence left, some tiny trace of childhood that I don't know how you managed to hang on to. I like that about you. We need that to balance the lifeless fighting. But for all that you've managed to retain some piece of your old self, you still aren't that person. You still think tactics, you still look at every person with suspicion, you still understand that any morning you could wake up to face your death. It's not a law that prevents us from going back to older days; it's our own subconscious inability."

"So I'm a naïve soldier who wishes for things she can't have; okay," I accepted graciously. "So what are you? How have you changed? What have you become?"

She looked away, the fire leaving her. "You know who I am."

"Let me rephrase the question: who do you think you are?"

"What is this, a therapy session? Because sorry, Doc, I don't really want to talk about how it makes me feel," Rachel snapped, her voice venomous. I was getting under her defenses.

"Rachel, no one can ever really know another person, not completely. I know you better than most of the group, but I still don't know every bit of you. It's not fair for me to assess you. I don't want my own impressions, I don't want to hear what Jake or Marco or Tobias would say about you, I just want you to tell me. Who have you become?"

Spinning around, Rachel punched the side of her dresser. I jumped at her sudden violence, but I wasn't concerned about her hurting herself; she'd pulled the punch at the last second to reduce the noise.

"I'm exactly who you think I am. I'm the bloodthiry, battle-loving reckless girl who gets people killed." Although she growled this, I could see the guilt and pain in her eyes.

"I don't believe that."

"You saw me today, what more do you need? I got that old man killed. I nearly got you killed. I did everything wrong."

"It was one day. One mission."

"That's all it takes to get someone killed!"

I stood up to face her, realizing that I needed to use force to get her to see reason. Rachel responds well to the push-push back method of dealing with things. "Do you want me to be completely frank with you?"

"That would be a nice change."

"You're a bad leader," I said outright. She stared at me, startled; I'm rarely this overtly critical, even when I say I'm going to be. "You dismissed all of our concerns, you used too much force and not enough stealth, and you didn't think things through. You ignored us like we were your servants and not your friends. You handled the mission badly."

Her eyes looked at me, the pain visible in them, but she seemed resigned to accept it, nodding slowly. So I threw the curve ball.

"But I don't hate you for it, because you were really just being yourself."

"Yeah, a screw up," said Rachel, her voice subdued, and I knew that I'd hurt her. God help me, I'd meant to. I needed to hurt her to get through her defenses, to make her stop fighting everything I said and make her actually listen.

I walked over and put my hands on her shoulders. I looked her right in the eyes and for the first time since this whole thing started, she looked back at me, directly and intently.

"No, not a screw up. A person who is confident, aggressive, and independent. A person who likes to get things done hard and fast, who knows she's right, and who hates answering to anyone else. Those aren't bad traits Rachel. As a soldier, they're assets, but as a leader, they're liabilities. You aren't cut out for a role of leadership. So what? Very few people are. We're really lucky to have Jake, because without him, we'd be in trouble. Everyone knows I can't lead; Marco's approach would be too cautious; Ax is too accustomed to following orders; and Tobias is too reclusive. Does that make us bad soldiers? Does it?"

"No," Rachel whispered.

"No," I echoed. "Because we need all of us. We need a leader, an analyst, a brain, a tree hugger, and yes, Rachel, even a Xena. It's that mixture that makes us so powerful."

"But even as a soldier, you guys have issues with me," Rachel argued. "I'm too brutal, I'm too reckless, I'm a risk. Every time we go into battle, I'm the one Jake watches. I'm the one he tells to hold back. I'm the one he's always worried about. I'll bet if you asked him today who is most likely to get us into a troublesome situation, he'd name me."

"Jake would be lost without you."

Rachel snorted. "Right."

"Oh, stop being self-deprecating. On some level, you know it's true. You're the only one bold enough to take the big risks. Your confidence rubs off on us, it helps us. Sometimes you scare us, yes, but it's because we're scared for you, of what will happen to you one day when you're just a bit too reckless. And on some level, we're afraid because you display the dark things that are inside all of us. The pieces of ourselves that we suppress, you project. But we need that, we need that outlet to keep our own darkness from consuming us."

"I'm not some sort of psycho!" Rachel cried, and I could see her breaking. "I don't enjoy killing people! I don't get some murderous thrill out of it!"

"I know you don't," I said softly.

"I go home at night, and I get sick! I have nightmares, and I see the faces and hear the screams, just the same as you do! It haunts me, too! I still hear David begging! I still see the bodies of Controllers I've had to kill! I still feel the blood, warm and sticky on my hands! I like the fighting, yeah. It's important, it's necessary, and it's a thrill. If I could go back and do it again, I still would. But I don't like the killing. I never have." More quietly, as she looked down, she whispered. "I get scared, too. Of them . . . of myself . . . ."

"I know," I said again, seeing the real Rachel coming out, the parts of her that she rarely shows to anyone.

When she looked back up, she had tears in her eyes. "I thought I'd killed you today, Cassie. I thought I'd gotten my best friend killed."

"You didn't." I hugged her, feeling her quietly sob. "I'm still here."

"I left you there, I left you to them!"

"You were dying, Rachel. You thought I was out. It's not your fault."

"I killed that man . . ."

"He was old, he had a heart attack. For all you know, he could have left that station ten minutes later and had his heart fail him when he was startled at a car honking. You made some bad judgement calls, Rachel, you but had good intentions, and you didn't kill anyone. We're all still here, so you did something right."

Rachel pulled away from me and sat back down, wiping her eyes furiously. "Sorry."

"Now that's one thing I do hate about you," I said, trying to sound friendly, but entirely serious. "The way you act like you can't show anyone how you're feeling. Sometimes you have to let it out, at least to me, to Tobias. To someone."

She smiled a bit. "I was actually apologizing for today. I was a bit thick-headed, I guess. I kinda didn't listen."

"Kind of?" I grinned back. "Rachel, we could have been shouting at you with megaphones and you wouldn't have heard us."

"Okay, touche."

"Hey, like I said, it's who you are. If I'd been in charge, I probably would have spent all my time listening and no time doing."

"You know, it wasn't a total loss," said Rachel, cautiously grabbing hold of some of her old enthusiasm.

"No," I agreed. "We made it out alive, and we got rid of that inspector, which can only help us in the long run. That guy was not easy to beat."

"And we made a statement. The other Yeerks have got to be more scared now than ever before. I swear I saw one guy wet his pants down in the Yeerk pool."

"I'm sure," I agreed, mock seriously, knowing she'd seen no such thing.

"The Controllers we attacked will be running from animals for weeks."

"I'm sure they're feeling pretty inadequate right about now."

"Thinking about giving up."

"Visser Three's pulling out the troops already."

"Damn straight."

We smiled at each other, knowing our words were ridiculous. We'd hardly made a dent, as always, but our bravado was a comfort, a lie we could console ourselves with until we one day found actual victory. Rachel had been right, after all—we were soldiers, for all that we were young, and soldiers do whatever it takes to keep fighting.

Rachel glanced back at the clock, now reading 2:14 am. "It's getting pretty late."

"You kicking me out?" I teased, knowing I should go anyway. "Well, fine, then. Wouldn't want to lose the rest of the night's sleeplessness."

"Actually, I was about to ask if you'd be interested in raiding the fridge with me," said Rachel. "I think we've got some chocolate cake in there. And I know Jordan just rented some really bad movies that we could mock brilliantly, even with our brains as sleep-deprived as they are."

I smiled at her, and she mirrored my action. For the first time since the very beginning of this war, I saw in her smile the reflection of the girl she'd once been, my original best friend: aggressive, intelligent, someone you didn't want to mess with, but still innocent. Still untainted.

Unbloodied and unscarred.

"My parents won't miss me this late. I can get home before they wake up," I said, gladly accepting her invitation.

She beamed and linked her arm through mine. "Excellent!"

"On one condition."

Rachel cocked an eyebrow.

"Next weekend, we go and pet animals at my house. And no dress-up."

"Deal, Cass," Rachel laughed. "Deal."