The other thing about Marco saying to Jake “You’re not getting me killed to save your father!” which is one of a total of like, two times in #31 that Marco loses his temper, which is fucking miraculous given the stakes and the way Jake is acting, is that it illustrates how completely he has internalized the mentality that the team—not just the war, but the team— is all of their first responsibility and everything else they love is secondary; and how much Jake has not. Marco threw a fit about that concept very early on, before anyone else recognized that it was going to come down to that. But he’s worked through it and reached the conclusion by the end of #5. Jake doesn’t really get there until #53.

We're back baby. Thinking about the barely explored psychological layer cake that is Jake's apparent willingness in book 31 to kill Tom if that's what it takes to save their dad. Put 53-54 aside. That was Tom vs the world, and it was also his only way to save Tom. This is just one life for another life. And it's not just that he cares about his dad more than his brother. It's that he has clearly brought himself to a place where he views the hybrid entity Tom-Yeerk with hatred and enmity, and most of that hatred stems from rage on behalf of the wrong done to his brother, but he cannot afford to untangle that hatred from the breathing human body and mind called Tom Berenson. It is wholly irrational to value his father's life over Tom's life because of anger at what has been done to Tom. But it's also necessary to his continued cognitive functioning. He'll fall apart if he looks at any of it too closely.

God Animorphs #31 really was The Book. In what other book ever do you get a fourteen year old saying to his best friend in desperation “He’s my father! I can’t just let him die!” and then pausing in the face of the awful realization that instead of the argument-ending trump card that by all rights that statement should be, it’s the weakest point he’s ever made and one of the cruelest things he’s ever said, because he’s saying it to the boy who he greenlit to kill his own mother last month.

One of the things I like about Animorphs #31 which I will someday make a stupidly long post about is that it illustrates that Jake's position of leadership is completely conditional on him making—most of the time and with a reasonable allotted margin for error— what the group considers to be the correct call. Individual group members will follow orders they dislike for a given period of time out of trust in/loyalty to Jake and the team, but this is not a military hierarchy, and if they all agree he's incorrect they'll move forward together in direct opposition to his instructions to do something that would completely and personally fuck him up forever.

Something about the way that like. Between #15 and #30/#31 the caretaking, nurturing element of their love for each other was destroyed. The love that would get Jake to keep a secret from the team to protect Marco’s privacy and dignity, that would get Jake to encourage Marco to make whatever call sits right with him, to extend mercy and gentleness. The love that Marco has for Jake that makes him want to figure out what the right thing is to do. Between #15 and #30/31 that is destroyed, and what’s left is a love that serves only one purpose which is to hold them both to the mark. Their duty to each other is just winning. It’s just the line from A to B. It’s reminding each other of that when they falter, when they waver on the edge of humanity, it’s dragging each other back into strategy. And it’ll destroy them both but it will win them the war.