"JUST LET ME WIN!"
"JUST LET ME SAVE YOU!"
Tears were running down my cheeks but somehow I held fast, standing my ground despite the ray of magic dwindling my health down, past one, past a half, past a quarter, on and on.
"Please, Asriel! Just let me save you! JUST LET ME!"
I had to, please, I had to. I couldn't lose another one, I couldn't fail again. I had too many failures, too many times I had failed to help, failed to comfort, failed to save.
I could never really save anyone, from their situation, from their world, from themselves. I tried, I tried so hard, but nothing I did was ever enough. The homeless person on the street all I could do was spare a dollar or a sandwich. The abused and neglected friend whose father I called the cops on, the mother just took him back. The mangy, starved, flea ridden little dog I found on the side of the road that I took in, fed, cleaned, sheltered; animal control found his owners and gave him right back to his abusive home.
The girl who cut herself in the locker room, the one who never spoke, the one who wanted to die, the one who wanted to run away, the one who tried to starve himself, all of them, I couldn't really help. I tried, in the end nothing changed. The little kitten born in my sister's room that was barely breathing, that I sat and tried to help gets its heart beating, tried to get it to breathe, that died at my fingertips, the one that I sat in the shower crying over.
The unhappiness of my homesick mother, the longing of my loss-stricken father, the tears of my lonely sister, the self-inflicted cuts of my desperate brother, the aloof solitude of my hopeless brother; the wounds that could never be healed of my friends; in the end I was never enough to make a real difference. I always hear 'you can't save the world' and my response is always 'I'm not trying to save the world, I'm just trying to fix this.' But that's not true, I know it isn't. I know I'm lying, I know I'm trying to save the world, I'm trying to save everyone, solve everything, and I know I can't.
So why do I keep trying? Why, despite how in the end nothing changes, despite how after it all nothing I did made any impact, why do I still try? Why am I still trying, right now? Half the time I don't even know why I'M even living, how is it I always find myself trying to convince others life is worthwhile when I don't even know why I'm still trying? Is it that I'm selfish, in the end? Is it that I'm so desperate to save myself that I try to save everyone else?
Is that why? Is that why, when I was alone and crying in the bathroom corner, when I realized no one was going to come save me, that I had to save everyone else? I remember thinking that if no one would save me, then people like that didn't really exist; then I thought how horrible it was that people like that didn't exist, that other people in need of saving would never be saved. I remember thinking that someone needed to do that job, to fill that role, to save the world, and that if no one was doing it, it would have to be me.
So is that selfishness, trying to find meaning in my own life by finding it in the lives of others? Especially when I'm never enough to actually- …No. No that wasn't true, was it? I may not have been enough to save everyone, or even most people I tried, but that didn't make it pointless, did it? And even then, even if I didn't feel like I really helped, there were some. Some that thanked me, some that told me they'd be dead without me, some that told me I was a reason they wanted to stay alive, to change, to help. Even if they were a small batch, even if I felt like I didn't really do anything, it only mattered if they thought it did, right? There was an old saying I heard, 'he who saves a life saves the world entire'. If that was true, and if what they told me was true, had I already saved the world? Had I already saved several worlds?
My HP was down to decimal points I couldn't fathom but my soul didn't shatter, and the ray continued to beat down on me. My eyes were blurry from light and tears, but I saw them glistening down his cheeks as well. If I had already saved the world…I could do it again, right?
"Please," I whispered this time, "Please let me save you. Let me save someone. Please, let me do this!"
I wasn't just saving him, I realized. I was trying to save me, too. Normally I would consider myself selfish but this time…this time I felt it was finally ok. I would save him, and he would save me.
And we both would save the world.
So what drives me to do that? What drives me to try and save and save and save even when I fail so so many times? When I hurt and suffer because I fail to ease other's suffering? I suppose I knew the answer now, from all this.
Determination.