Content Warnings: Some stuff that could be read as disordered eating. Brief mentions of canon gruesome things. Lot of canon-typical talk about kids / young teens being in danger of dying.

Other Notes: FFnet's categories are a blessing and a curse, and the lack of tagging is... not a blessing. This is tagged with "Complicated Relationships" on AO3.

!

On Sunday afternoon, I walked to the mall. Rachel invited me to meet there and I said yes. I didn't feel like shopping but I felt even less like arguing. Or sitting alone in my room.

Actually, sitting alone in my room was exactly what I felt like doing. It's what I was doing when my mom knocked on my door and handed me the phone. I wasn't moping, exactly. You have to be thinking about things to mope. I wasn't thinking about anything. I wasn't doing anything. Not even my homework, which was due the next morning.

But Rachel wanted to go to the mall. If I said no, I'd start thinking. I'd think about Rachel. I'd think about what had happened. I'd mope.

So I said yes and we went shopping.

Except we didn't. We sat in the food court - the safely noisy, crowded food court - and we talked.

"I should really be doing homework," I said, between mouthfuls of fries. Food didn't taste so great lately. But these fries were delicious. I wanted to eat as fast as I could, before I started remembering the taste of Hork-Bajir. Or raw wild mushrooms. "But all my teachers have been going easy on me since I got lost in the woods."

"They should be," Rachel said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder and taking a drink of her shake. Something about that was bothering me. I didn't know what. She grinned. "You've been through a very traumatic experience, after all."

I tried to grin back. "Maybe the rest of you should take turns getting lost for a few days."

"Maybe."

Then the conversation just stopped for a while. Neither of us could think of anything to say, I guess. I started eating slower because I didn't want to leave.

Rachel asked for a fry. I pushed the cardboard tray across the table so she could take a few, and I realized what was bothering me.

See, when we were younger, Rachel would get a shake and I would get fries and we would both dip the fries in the shake and eat them while our parents sighed and told us not to make a mess. It had been so long since we'd done that. A lifetime ago, or at least that's how it felt. And now Rachel had ordered a shake and she was drinking it and I had ordered fries and I was eating them.

"Do you remember," I said, gesturing at everything on the table, "what we used to do?"

Rachel glanced down at the food. She smiled. Kind of. "Yeah," she said. "I guess I forgot."

"I guess I did too." I tried to laugh but it wouldn't come out. Not even that horrible fake laugh I'd tried in the woods when I was still pretending to Karen - to Aftran - that I was just a normal girl.

Rachel pushed the fries back across to me. "Thanks," she said.

"Yeah," I said. I stared at the fries. I wondered what the next bite would taste like.

"You know," Rachel said, quietly. "I only did it for you."

I looked up. "You only did what?"

"Jake didn't give any orders. He walked away. He just - ditched us. Said we had to make our own choices. And then they all left. Tobias first. It was just me, Marco and Ax, and I kept hoping –"

She laughed. A real laugh. Strained but totally, completely real. Like it was easy. "I think all three of us were hoping one of the others would do it. But then Ax left. And Marco and I just looked at each other. And you know what he said?"

I shook my head. I still don't know what I meant: No, I don't know. Or no, don't tell me.

She did tell me.

"He said, 'You know, when Jake ordered me to kill Cassie if I had to, I didn't even argue. I didn't even blink. I just flew away and hoped it wouldn't come to that. And I kept wondering why he ordered me. And now I know why. And I guess I already did.' So I asked him. And he said, 'Because you and me, Rachel? We're the only two people still standing here trying to decide whether or not to kill this little girl. And you were busy demorphing.' And then he walked away. And it was just me. Me and this little girl I was trying to decide whether or not to kill."

I was holding my breath. Some part of me was worried about people overhearing, but most of me was worried about what I was hearing.

The knowledge that Jake had ordered Marco to kill me didn't hurt the way I would have expected it to. It was a cold hurt. Dull. I think I'd known, in the back of my mind. Jake was the leader. Decisions like that were his job. And Marco had said it, hadn't he? Now it's not the little girl who may have to die. Now it's you.

Rachel was looking at the table as she spoke, instead of at me. "I wasn't fully morphed. I didn't need to be. I could have crushed her. I probably could have even killed her in my own human body." She looked up then. To see if I was shocked, maybe.

I realized I wasn't. Not really.

Rachel sat up straighter. "But I didn't. I didn't. Because you - you gave up everything, Cassie. Everything. To save Karen. To make peace with... that thing."

"Aftran," I said, very quietly. I didn't like the way Rachel had said the word peace. Like it was a joke she didn't get.

Rachel just looked at me. And then she shrugged. "Sure," she said. "Okay." But she didn't repeat the name. "You gave up your whole life just to save... them, and I couldn't undo that."

"Thanks," I said. I didn't know what else I was supposed to say.

But Rachel shook her head. Frustration flashed across her face. "You don't get it."

"What don't I get?"

"Out of all of us, I took the longest to decide not to kill a helpless, injured little girl. That's something I have to know about myself now. That's something everyone else knows about me now. What none of the others know is what I might do in the future. When I'm staring down some kid you didn't throw your life away for."

"Rachel," I whispered.

"No one knows that except me," she said, and took another drink of her shake. "And you. I'm pretty sure we both know what I'd do. Without Jake there to call me off. Without you there to remind me what and who we're supposed to be fighting for."

I tried to speak. I couldn't think of anything to say and my throat wouldn't cooperate.

Rachel sighed. Not an exhausted, world-weary sigh. Just a sigh. Like she was annoyed. "And I know you didn't ask to be anybody's - anchor, or leash, or whatever, but I didn't ask to be anybody's warship. Attack dog. You know?"

I nodded.

I did know. I really, really did.

Rachel finished her shake. I heard the straw sucking up air. She made a face at the noise and said, "You gonna finish those?"

I looked down at my fries. I cleared my throat. "No."

Rachel picked up her empty cup and my half empty tray of fries and walked over to dump everything in one of those big rolling trash cans.

Then she came back, and smiled, and offered me her hand.

"Come on," she said. "There's a sale on at Nordstrom."