Disclaimer: I don't own.

*hyperventilates* oh, man. I'm dead, aren't I.

I know I am an epic FAIL, because the truth is, I had forgotten this story. I know. That is my sad excuse. I bow my head in shame. *bows head in shame*

So yeah, this is the product of last night's work, when I checked my email in the first time in a long time and found that people had actually favorited and alerted this story, and one even reviewed this story, even though it's been months, literally months, since I updated. Those people are simply made of awesome.

Not that the rest of you aren't made of awesome, either! The rest of you have stuck by me for more than just a few chapters, so I thank you too, immensely.

...and this is getting longer than I thought and starting to sound like a love letter. So after checking my email, I went back here and found out that, hey, I hadn't updated in a really long time, and that maybe it would be nice if I did start updating again.

So I wrote this. Though I had to re-read all fourteen chapters again, cringing at all my sad writing skills. (No, it really does suck. I don't know how you guys lived through it.)

So yeah- here is your long-awaited:

Chapter Fifteen:

I walked around until I reached where Jake stood.

He was also looking up at the sky. I snorted. Seemed to me that it was a big human thing to do. Me? I didn't see much to look at up there. Just stars and more stars. And I done looking at stars. Well, more specifically, being forced to look at stars and figuring out how to conquer them.

Jake turned as I got near. "Hey, Madi." He greeted me.

I nodded curtly. "Jake. You had something to say to me?" I felt on edge, tensed up. Cassie had said that Jake didn't know about Darwin. But I wasn't taking any chances. Plus I hadn't talked to Jake as much as Cassie. It was natural that I was more nervous around Jake.

"Yeah." He scratched his head. "Ok, look. I was just wondering about a few things. You know, like how you've been doing so far."

He was stumbling over his words. I eyed him and replied with, "I've been doing well."

"Really?" He asked skeptically. "You sure Marco hasn't been giving you any trouble?"

"Marco gives trouble to us all." I pointed out. "Except maybe Cassie. No, wait, not even that."

Jake grinned faintly, and then his grin faded away. Was he nervous? "It's just that…" He twitched. "He was really against you being with us. He was against David, too. But really. He's just looking out for the group."

I twitched. Back to the David thing. I was never going to be free of him, was I? And I didn't even know the boy. "How bad was David?"

Jake's face darkened. "Bad. He was…" He hesitated, struggling with his words. "David wasn't…stupid. He just was scared and lost. And I know he hated us." Jake shrugged. "He tried to kill us. It didn't work, but it nearly did." He made a face. "I'm not that good at explaining this, am I?"

I shrugged. I got the basic gist of it. "I'm not David, though."

"No. You're not." He agreed.

Finally. It was like a great burden being lifted off my shoulders. I felt some relief that I wasn't being compared to David anymore. One less problem. At least, according to Jake. Marco's opinion suddenly seemed very trivial. I grinned triumphantly.

"That doesn't mean that we still don't have problems with you." Jake added hurriedly.

My grin faded. "Huh?"

"Madi." His voice grew cold and quiet. His eyes watched my expression carefully. "You don't trust us. You don't tell us things. We know you're keeping things from us. And maybe they're important, maybe they aren't. But the concept still stands. We can't keep secrets in a group like this."

Well, I didn't see why not. I mean, secrets were meant to be kept from others. And some information was not meant to be shared. They'd never understand, but it felt good keeping secrets. We weren't able to keep anything from the Yeerks. They were in our minds, in our buisnesses, and we could never keep anything, no memories, no secret moments, nothing, from them. To keep secrets meant keeping something. And, for me, that was a good feeling. You don't know what it feels like to have your own mind invaded.

They didn't understand that.

"If we don't trust each other, we go down. If we don't understand each other, know each other, we go down. In a small group like this, we can't have any betrayals. We need to know what everyone is thinking. Otherwise, we go down. And you know what? We can't go down. We've been fighting too long to not go on."

I narrowed my eyes. He was putting it rather frankly. No small talk. Keep things from us and we have problems.

"We've been waiting and waiting for the Andalites to come. We've been holding back the Yeerks and we've been fighting little battles. And everyday, we get pushed back a little more. And everyday, we jump at opportunities to kill Yeerks. Believe me, we know how to fight and we know how to win. We need to stick together, and fight as a group to hit the Yeerks. We can't not trust each other because then we'll fall apart. And we'll do anything to win this. So we need to know everything we can get. You understand that, right?"

I looked at him. The whole speech made sense, but it also had that air that was not Jake. "Did Cassie tell you to say that, or did you figure it out on your own?"

He looked surprised, and then grimaced. "You're pretty perceptive."

I waited. He wasn't very good at manipulating emotions, was he? This attempt fairly stunk. I was surprised Cassie tried to tell Jake to manipulate me with a stupid speech.

But, ah, I told myself. That's the thing. Is he manipulating you? Or is he completely honest? I gauged his body motions. He had been tensed up near the beginning of the conversation. Now he was slightly looser.

He finally laughed. "Yeah, I suck at this. Cassie told me to say that. But I'm guessing you already knew that?"

I nodded.

He ran his hand through his hair. "Ok. But here's what she didn't tell me to say."

He bent down, kneeling in front of me. He took my hand, so I had to look at him. "See, Madi, I know you know everything I just said. You don't need to hear it, really. But here's what you need to know." He looked me in the eye. "I heard you back in Chapman's office. You froze. I know what it feels like to freeze. I've frozen before, in the middle of snapping out orders. And I froze because my family was in danger. And it was a case of saving the world, or saving one person. The case being that that one person means the world to you."

I didn't breath. And I think Jake knew. He knew like Cassie knew, but unlike Cassie, he didn't learn it from me. He could tell from my silence. He could tell from experience.

And there was the difference.

I remembered how Cassie had said that Jake had a brother, too. I remembered feeling a keen pain for Jake, a boy I barely knew, and then telling Cassie about my brother. I remembered, later, questioning myself, why I had said such a thing. And now, I kind of knew.

Both of us knew how it felt to be torn and scared and lost, unable to deal, and not knowing how everything was going to end up. We were forced to deal with this reality.

We had more in common than I thought.

Suddenly, Jake looked tired and old. "That's- I mean, that's a tough decision." He scratched his head. "It'll influence you. It'll hurt, too. And hurt on top of hurt will add up. You can't deal with all that in the middle of a battle. You'd explode." He looked up at me. Our eyes met.

And then everything changed.

I was in the middle of exhilaration that Jake and I had something in common that no one else on Earth had. Exhilaration came to a grinding halt when I saw something other than leadership and alertness and wariness in Jake's eyes.

Pity.

Jake went on. "I mean, all I could think of was I should've known this was coming. I should've been prepared for this. But- how can you prepare for something like this?"

I nodded slowly. "You can't prepare for that." I didn't recognize my voice.

"Yeah," He said, almost to himself. "That's what I told myself. So I kept putting off the whole should-I-or-shouldn't-I thing, not coming to an actual solution until I had to face it."

Just like me.

"And when I did have to face it, I messed up. Big time. I couldn't think, couldn't do anything because I was too busy trying to decide at that very moment." He shook his head. "So I froze."

Just like me.

"And because of that, I almost cost everyone their lives."

Just like me.

"In fact, if it wasn't for Marco and Cassie and Tobias, I would've been dead." He gave me a regretful smile. "I was too close to the whole problem. I couldn't see straight." He stood up, brushing off his knees. "And you can't afford not to see straight when you're dealing in a war. It'll get you killed."

I could've killed him on the spot. For a moment, I couldn't see straight.

There was an uncomfortable pause, as I looked down, and searched for words to describe how I was feeling. "Jake." I said flatly. "Did you come up with that right now?"

He faltered. "What do you mean?"

My lip curled. "You know." Oh, yes, he knew. You had to admire him. He fooled me, and I'm not easy to fool.

Jake replied just as quietly, "You would've done the same."

I looked back up at him, and his eyes were as flinty as I'm sure mine were. "Doesn't it go against your so-called morals?" My voice was smooth. My insides were shaking.

"I know where the line is drawn."

"I wonder, Jake. Do you?"

Jake was smart. He knew I wasn't going to tell them what they wanted to hear. Sure, they could talk and I could listen, but I wouldn't tell. So he tried a different approach.

He used his past experiences with his brother to connect with me. Try to lower my defenses. Tried to see eye-to-eye with me.

The first attempt to make me give in? Nothing more than that: an attempt. Another way to loosen me up. It was supposed to be transparent and see-through. I was supposed to think that he was trying to trick me.

But it served its purpose: to try and make me cocky. Confident. I thought that he was horrible at manipulating emotions, when in reality; he was stringing me along. I didn't think he'd attempt another trick.

And then Jake launched his second trick, which was more subtle and personal and cunning.

A trick within a trick. Clever.

And the crux of it all? I had believed it. I really, really believed it.

"Yeah, I do." He stated calmly. "The real question is: do you? Because I know where Rachel's line is. I know where Marco's line and Cassie's line and Tobias's, and even Ax's are. But I don't know yours. I don't even think you know where yours is."

"I do so!" I snarled my voice louder than before, and much angrier. "You don't understand me. You don't know how many battles I've fought in. Maybe just as many as you. Maybe more. The only difference is that we fought in different forms, but that matters not. I know war. I know where my lines are drawn and I know what I have to do."

Jake waited until my voice faded away. "You really have no idea."

I gaped openly at him, too stunned to speak.

"You forgot that you're not a Yeerk. Because your lines are the ones the Yeerks live by. We are different from the Yeerks, and until you can remember that, you won't know where your line is."

I was wrong. Believing Jake hadn't been the worst part.

The worst part was that he was right.

I bent my head and stared at Jake's shoes.

Every word was true. Everything he said was honest.

He had manipulated me without lying. (I always lied to get what I wanted.) And he won. (Not just won, totally beaten me into the ground.) And was completely right. (Too often I had been right before, and I was not used to this feeling of defeat.)

I felt sick. Bested by a boy. I had ten times his experience and more viewpoints. I had the minds of easily ten or twenty Yeerks in my head. He had nothing special about him. He was simply human.

But then again, so was I.

I straightened myself to face Jake again, who was patiently waiting for me to speak. "You're pretty perceptive yourself, Jake."

He cracked a smile. "I try."

I think, if I hadn't been so ashamed and tired and beaten down, I would've respected or approved of this boy more. As it was, I could only hate him.

I turned around to go back into the barn, my eyes as hard and glinting as the cold, unforgiving stars in the sky.

GAAAAAHHHHHHH! That was soooo bad!

Please excuse the worst chapter written in Animorph fanfics. I think my brain died halfway while writing this. Bleh.

I went back and read the reviews I have gotten, and oh, the guilt. But yeah, I totally deserved it.

metamorphstorm: Wow. Thanks so much. Now I feel even more guilty about not writing this earlier. lol. But no, seriously, thank you so much for sticking by me. You. Are. Awesome. :)

voodooqueen126: The age difference between the two isn't bad. I agree, five/six years is fine. It's just that Madi hasn't...really hit puberty yet. Awkward, much? Oh, and I'm really sorry about the long update. You've been a great reviewer, really.

Freakazoid2.0: We're both slackers, now. :) And thank you for the long review, it totally made my day. And here's another test thing for you, though, admittedly, I really didn't plan this out. It kinda just happened. Oh, and thank you for loving my humor, and the part where Madi morphs back. Seriously- you wrote so much, I have a hard time trying to figure out how to tell you how much you rock in as little space as possible! Madi and her parents and her brother is an issue that will come up- oh, she will totally met with her mother, and it will be interesting. *hint, hint* So, in case, I haven't conveyed it to you yet: YOU. ROCK.

Caralin942: Ha, you're the one who reviewed after I hadn't written in months and months, and got my butt back in front of the computer Word doc, too. Kudos to you for indirectly helping me to write this chapter out. And thanks so much for the review.