A/N: Woohoo! As I'm writing this at 5:20 P.M. on Tuesday, April 30, I have 204 reviews! Thank you so much! My goal is to have 261, at least, reviews. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE help me get that many and complete my goal! PLEASE! I REALLY LOVE REVIEWS! Also, thank you to Lady Lupin, who is co-beta reading with mickEmousina.
Chapter 19
Jake was behind me. I knew it. And so I continued on to the log where Rachel and Tobias had been sitting, hoping to escape from Jake. I had thought that he was better. But he was blaming himself again.
I sat down on it facing away from the camp, away from Jake.
"Cassie!" he called.
Unable to ignore him any longer, I turned around.
"Cassie."
I looked at him, and tried to smile. For him, the guy I loved.
"Look, I'm really sorry about earlier… I'm just so scared, and I keep replaying that battle over and over again. There had to have been something I could do to save him. I should not have let us get caught. If I let him die when we were just up against the Garatron, what's going to happen when we fight The One?"
I felt my smile fall from my face. How could he blame himself? He was doing as well as he could, we all were. He knew as little about The One and the Garatron as we did. Our only source of information about The One was through Ax, and he was too petrified to talk about him.
"You will do just fine, Jake," I said softly. "We all believe in you. You got us through three years of war against a powerful, advanced empire, with only the six of us. Not only that, but you saved the world. You need to stay together for us, so we can beat this… this evil." I meant every word I said.
"I wasn't able to save James and his people, Tom, or Rachel," he disputed.
I sighed deeply. This was not going anywhere. "Tom and Rachel did not die, though. They're sleeping, right over there. As for the auxiliary Animorphs, you tried to save them. Nobody could have known how long it would take Marco and Ax to get to the weapons system and disarm the Dracon beams."
Jake let his gaze fall. "There had to have been something I could have done."
"Jake," I said, my voice cracking, and I put my hand on his shoulder. "You were unable to do anything. Anyway, Tom and Rachel are alive again, and right over there."
He lifted his head and gazed in the direction of my fingers, and watched the sleeping forms for a minute.
"I just don't know what to do. I'll just kill somebody again," he finally said bitterly.
"Look at me," I commanded, miserable.
He didn't move.
"Look at me!" I sobbed. I felt tears pouring from my eyes like a leaky faucet as I shook him, trying to make him understand. Where was Jake, my Jake, the one that I fell in love with? The man in front of me was Jake, but somehow… different. This one was always upset, blaming himself.
The other Jake had sometimes second-guessed his decisions, yes, but never like this. The new Jake that I was looking at was a shell of the old one, a new Jake that was in serious clinical depression.
"What happened to you?" I asked him, my voice quiet.
He finally looked at me, his eyes weary and tired. After a minute or so, he answered, "I don't know, Cassie. I just don't know."
Not believing that I was actually telling him all this, I said, "You're clinically depressed, I think. You need help. When – if – we make it back to earth, you will go see a doctor, and get some sort of anti-depressant. You need it, Jake."
"I know," he answered. "I already promised Tom I would."
Slowly, I nodded. He lifted his hand and brushed away the tears on my cheeks, and smiled.
Smiling back at him through my tears, I put my hand over his. He pulled me close and we hugged. He would be okay, eventually.
We sat in a comfortable silence for a few more minutes, accepting each other's unspoken apologies, but then a deep, resounding noise reverberated through the camp, followed by a higher, shorter pitch, and then another, deeper than before.
One by one, the Hork-Bajir stirred. Indi jumped out of the tree onto the ground, listening.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Speaking Trees," Indi answered.
Jake and I exchanged a confused look.
"Speaking Trees tell about other tribes. Say Hork-Bajir in next valley die. Andalite-monster kill. All Hork-Bajir gone. Andalite-monster fast. Kill more Hork-Bajir. Look like Hork-Bajir, too." Indi said, translating the Speaking Trees for us.
"The One," Jake hissed.
"More? Already?" I asked to no one in particular. "He's like some sort of fast-moving bacteria!"
Jake nodded his head in agreement. "We have to get moving, then. The sooner we find him, the sooner we stop him and he'll stop absorbing Hork-Bajir."
"Right," I agreed, glad that he was making decisions again. The two of us moved back to the clearing and one by one, shook the others awake. In muted tones, we told them what the Hork-Bajir had told us. Rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, they sat up, and we started going towards the valley where The One was last seen. Inwardly, I smiled. Who knew if we would survive this? But if we did, Jake would get help, and he would be fine.
A/N: PLEASE review! PLEASE! Also, loons are the coolest animals ever, and radioactive loons will take over the world! And, I would just like to say that two out of the four (including me) girls in my carpool are female dogs. As I'm sitting here writing this, they're typing messages to each other on their computers, making fun of the very nice lady who picks us up on Mondays, the music the lady listens to, and the car she drives. Can you say stuck up? Ugh, I hate them. Just thought I'd tell you guys. :-P