Being Worth It
"While seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself." -Douglas Horton
Sunlight filtered through the window, the iron bars casting long shadows on the floor. He stared out through that little square, his mind blank and his eyes empty. A week. It has only been a week since he arrived here. The first day was chaos- reporters and cameras tried to shove themselves into his face, asking the same questions with different words with one in particular.
Why did you do it?
Revenge. Love.
Seemingly opposite ideals that went hand and hand. To love someone so much, to have them be the very center of your very existence only to have them violently ripped from your arms when it wasn't supposed to be their time to leave. And you want the one who took them to feel the overwhelming sense of lost that you do. To have them feel what it is like to lose literally everything.
But he supposed that wouldn't be true anymore when she came back to him—the one that he thought he lost. His daughter was back. Confused and dazed, but alive. His very reason for wanting vengeance.
A bell buzzed and the only real exit from his room slid up effortlessly. A guard came in, his back straight, and plainly said, "There's someone here to see you." The man got up from the floor, out of the shadowed corner, and stuck his hands out to be cuffed before stepping a foot out that door. Other inmates hooted and grumbled, shouting out comments and remarks. They were all ignored. They didn't matter.
His visitor wouldn't be his daughter- she was still in the hospital. He had no other family- his wife was dead and everyone else refused to share any sort of contact with him. Especially after his crimes. Perhaps it was another reporter, bright eyed and ready to grab his every word just so they could get paid for their jobs.
That idea was proven wrong when he saw her.
She was sitting on the other side of the thick glass, her back straight and her shoulders back. Her green eyes stared at him as he sat down, the orange jumpsuit rubbing harshly against his skin. There was a moment of silence between them before she picked up the black telephone and waited for him.
He couldn't understand why she was here. Why she was sitting across from him and not with her loved ones? Picking up the phone, he pressed it gently to his ear- he wouldn't know if he didn't ask.
"Hello."
"Hello."
"Why are you here? Don't you have a business to run?"
She took a deep breath, her voice coming out calm. Completely opposite to the few times that they have interacted, the usual energy and excitement that seemed to spill out of it constantly. "I want to understand something."
A snort escaped him before he could stop it- they all wanted to understand. How could he, a legend in the science field, fall as badly as he did? "About why I did it, I believe."
"No."
He was taken back. Everyone wanted to know why. So why didn't she?
"I know why you did what you did."
"That's up for me to decide, don't you think?" He could feel his enjoyment rising. Five minutes in and he couldn't see the infinite ways to twist this way from him. Because he didn't do what he did for him. It was all for his daughter. This woman in front of him, with her frizzy brown hair and flour painted jeans, wasn't like the others who came in. They would lean in, shooting questions off, waiting for answers, easy to read. But she wasn't giving him anything to work with. Except for the deep sadness that lay just below the surface of the determination in her eyes.
"You did it because you wanted someone to know what it was like to lose the one person that made your whole world go round. You wanted to spill that grief on to everyone else. But that person- you daughter- was never really gone. Even though it was more difficult to get to her, she was still within your reach. So tell me-" She leaned forward then and her next words filled his belly up with anger.
"Was it all worth it?"
He couldn't think as he spoke, the words tumbling out of his mouth. "Of course it was worth it! I got my daughter back!" How dare she question him on the worth of his crimes. His daughter was back and the man who took her away now understands the anger and grief that shook his world and harden his resolve to commit his crimes. He yelled these things at her. "How could even understand why I did what I did anyways? What do you know about losing someone?!"
Her hand- so thin and delicate looking- slammed violently onto the counter in front of her. The look in her eyes sucked the air out of his lungs. Tears, in any other person, would be threating to fall if they weren't already falling. But there were none glazing over those eyes. Green fire, hot and suffocating, was burning in those eyes. Threatening to pull him into them and burn him. Just like that fire- the one that he started just could he put his plans into action- burned one of the brightest young men that he ever knew. A young man that was one of his best students.
"Let me tell you a story- I had a sister once. We were the closest that sisters could ever be. One day she got married to a man who I loved as a brother. They were happy. I was happy. Then they had a little boy. When he was about six years old, he got a brother." Here, she gives a small chuckle. "He was completely taken with his brother. Over the moon, ever. They were all happy." Here, the fire in her eye dulls. "Then, one day, there was a car accident. My sister died on impact. My brother died on the way to hospital.
The boys came to live with me, grief in the oldest and confusion in the youngest. I shouldn't have been their guardian- I never had children of my own, my dating life was basically nonexistent, and I was just a wreck. But my sister and brother trusted me. So the three of us tried to find solid ground. And we did. Years passed by and the oldest went off to college. The youngest graduated high school at 13, a prodigy. I was so proud of my boys. Then the youngest decided to go to the same college as his brother. I was overjoyed- both of boys would be off changing world and staying out of trouble. They would be safe." The fire becomes relit, burning brighter.
On the day that the youngest got accept into college, there was a fire. Everyone got out expect for one professor. The oldest, who was never dream of not helping someone, ran in there to the horror of the youngest. There was an explosion. The oldest never came out. Just a little bit more of my heart broke away. I even almost lost his little brother after the funeral because he couldn't go through life without his biggest person in his life, in his world. But it turns out, the professor was still alive. He was the one to set the fire. And for what? To become no better than the man who supposedly killed his daughter." She stopped for a moment, the visibly trying to keep her emotions in control.
"So I'll ask again- was it worth it?"
"I…don't know anymore." And it was the truth. This woman in front of him lost three loved ones- a number that would make survival impossible. Two by a car accident. And one, the one who died too soon, by him. By his hands in his desperation for vengeance.
She stood up, "Okay." Just as she was about to hang the phone up, he asked one of his own questions. "Do you hate me?" A small, bittersweet smile made its' way onto her face.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Isn't hatred part of the reason why you wanted revenge? Because you hated a man? But you became what you accused that man of being in your blind quest for vengeance. Why would I want to become either one of you two?" Just before she hung the phone up, just before he would be led back to his cell and she would walk out of these doors, she added, "Hatred doesn't bring people back from the dead. It just doesn't seem worth it in the end." And then she was gone. The guard came to take him back to that little room that would be his home for the rest of his life.
Leave it to Cass Hamada to shake the rebuilt foundations of his existence.
"The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury."- Marcus Aurelius
Border for Author's Notes
So guess who saw Big Hero 6 twice, cried both times (I was a snot nosed mess at the end), and decided to deal with feels by giving more feels?
Sorry, not sorry.