Disclaimer: Not mine

Ashley Hammond/Astro Yellow: Of course Ashley loves him. Andros is just beating himself up for not protecting her. Ashley knows that he loves her, and she can't stop loving him, since they're soulmates. :P

Juzblue: Calan went way too far. He's got a sort of reason for it, but it'll just make you hate him more. And I did update soon.

Jenny: No, Calan wasn't raised by any of the people you suggested, and I think dropping someone on their head makes them more dumb than sadistic. Demon is a good example of that. If I'm supposed to update soon, I guess I should go finish the next chapter, then. :P

JDPhoenix: Yay, I'm twisted! Wow, this is the happy point of your week? Your school must be worse than mine... :P

Chapter 8

The blue ranger watched the conflicting emotions that passed over Andros's face with a kind of grim satisfaction that made Andros want to fly at him again, and it took all his willpower not to.

Instead, he turned around and stormed out of the building. He heard Alana call after him, and sped up, determined to get away from them all somehow. He didn't make it that much further before the pink ranger soon caught up to him, grabbing ahold of his arm, and turning him forcibly to face her.

"What do you want?" Andros demanded wearily. "Please, I just want to be alone."

"To help you," Alana said in a tone that clearly implicated she didn't want to help him any more than he wanted to be helped. Her face was hidden under a dark hood, but he had a good idea that if he could see her face, there would be no less distate as there had been in her voice. "Come on."

Yanking on his arm, Alana pulled him along, dragging him back to the building he'd just stormed from. She practically threw him down onto his bunk and stood there, glaring down at him. "You stay there and listen to me."

"Make me," Andros growled, standing up again. Alana sighed, and slapped him harshly across the face. He glared at her, stunned, her handprint appearing on his stinging cheek, but he refused to press his own hand to his cheek. Instead he sat down again, waiting sullenly for her to speak. He didn't have to wait long.

"You won't listen to Blaze, and you attack Calan whenever he comes near you, so that leaves me," she said icily. "We've all been trying to tell you the same thing, and this is how I'm going to do it. You've said that you don't much care whether we live or die, and I can tell you with certainty that we feel the same way about you. But regardless of our feelings for each other, we all want the same thing, for our own reasons. We want to defeat Arrow."

"I know that," Andros snapped, flinching as Alana moved, feeling his face grow hot. He didn't like being hit. "Get to the point."

"We brought you here to make us stronger. So far, you've only made us weaker."

"Well then maybe you shouldn't have arranged for Arrow to drag me out of my dimension," Andros said cooly, meeting her cold sapphire gaze.

"Maybe not," Alana agreed. "But what's done is done, and we can only move forward. You need to let go of all your anger, and just trust us a little."

"I thought trust was a luxury you couldn't afford," Andros muttered, surprised when the hint of a smile relaxed Alana's otherwise hard features.

"Sometimes you have to take a chance," she told him quietly. "Can you trust us, for Ashley?"

Andros exhaled slowly. "Not Calan. He did this."

"And the rest of us?"

He hesitated. "I don't know."

Alana sighed. "We're not all like Calan. Just give us a chance."

"I have," Andros snapped, suddenly furious. Why couldn't they see? Why did they feel that he owed them something?

"No, you haven't," Alana snapped back. Andros glared right back at her, his eyes twin pools of fury. All of this was her, and Calan, and Blaze. It was their illconceived plan that had brought him and Ashley to the surface of that planet. It was their fault, but he sighed, knowing that it was also his.

After awhile, he found himself saying softly, "Ashley was the first person that never judged me, one of few people who ever cared about me, and the second person to make a sacrifice for me that I don't deserve. I fought Arrow when I was fourteen, and he talked me into setting him free. Ashley convinced me that it wasn't my fault, even after he got away again. It's not just that I love her. I need her so much. It's selfish, but I need to save her for me just as much as for her."

He didn't know why he'd said the words. He knew that none of them cared for either him or Ashley, yet here he was, telling them what he had a feeling they would someday use against him.

Alana nodded distractedly, and stalked off. Andros watched her go, and shrugged off her abrupt departure. She'd done her job, that was all. Neither Blaze nor Calan had succeeded in snapping out of his daze, and that had left her. Now that it was done, she could go back to ignoring him as she always did.

Andros sighed, the familiar anxiety returning to him, as it always did before a fight. Without being told, he knew that there would be another attempt made before long, maybe as soon as the next day. They had to strike before Arrow could recover from whatever blow they had dealt him the day before, a small one, if Andros had judged the fight correctly.

Blaze walked through the doorway, and this time, when he was ordered to spar again, Andros put up a true fight, matching the black ranger block for block and kick for kick.

"We should have sent Alana after you sooner," Blaze grunted, leaping back to avoid a hurricane kick. He flipped himself over in midair and came back at Andros with an uppercut that the red ranger dodged successfully. "How hard did she hit you?"

"Pretty hard," Andros admitted, catching the black ranger in a chokehold. Blaze held up both hands in a gesture of defeat, and Andros released him.

"That's better," Blaze said, catching his breath. "I knew you could fight better than you were."

"How soon do we attack again?" Andros asked. If he didn't have Ashley back soon, he was going to go insane.

Blaze considered. "None of us were injured, so I'd say we could go anytime."

"When?" Andros pressed, urgency flooding his eyes. "Please, just tell me."

"Tomorrow, maybe," the black ranger said, "or the day after. Sometime soon."

Andros didn't succeed in hiding his frustration. He wanted to rescue Ashley now, not tomorrow, the day after, or sometime soon. Blaze noted his expression and sighed.

"You'll have her back," he said kindly. Andros sighed and nodded, blinking hard to keep back tears as he remembered the look on Ashley's face as he'd been dragged away from her.

"I should have made her go back," he muttered. "We walked right into Arrow's trap because I didn't want her to know that I was scared."

"We've all made mistakes," Blaze tried to tell him, but Andros wouldn't listen.

"But I've never paid for mine," he said, choking on his words. Swallowing hard, he left the room quickly, and collapsed face down onto his bunk. For three long weeks, he had managed to hold in all his emotions, but soon, he knew, he would be able to do that no longer.

He loved Ashley with all his heart and soul, and knew always would, although he kept hearing Calan's taunting that Arrow could kill their love. Andros prayed that it wasn't true, that Ashley wasn't laying somewhere, broken, everything that had made him love her dead and gone.