Disclaimer: Not Mine.
"Next question, please." I pointed to the young, brunette reporter and tossed her a charming smile. Heck, I didn't even need the smile. When you're as rich and well-known as I am, you don't need to do much chasing; they come to you.
"Have you ever regretted the war?" She blinked up at me, pen poised for my answer.
I chuckled appealingly and gripped the podium. "Great question, but with a very frank answer: No. This is my life, and I've always accepted it. This is just the way things are. Besides, there's not much I can do about it, right?"
It wasn't funny, and it wasn't a joke, but they laughed anyway. I can say whatever I want, and they'll laugh. I can go wherever I want, with whoever I want, whenever I want. That's the real result of the war: absolute freedom and almost unlimited money. How could I regret something like that?
--
Cassie and I weren't very close. Yeah, we were friends and teammates and defenders of the universe, but we weren't best friends or anything.
Still, when she asked, I had to answer. Cassie was a good girl, the kind of person that I sometimes used to want to be. She had morals, and probably still believed in God, and faith, and all the things I have problems with.
Maybe I felt a sort of obligation to answer her, then. A strange feeling that if any of us needed to stay at least somewhat innocent, it should be Cassie. Of course, in the end, even she wasn't immune.
She asked me the question before one of the meetings. She was doing her usual animal duties, and I came in early. I hardly had time to comment on her outfit of a tie-dye shirt with too-small, crap-splattered overalls before she turned and asked me it.
"Do you think it's worth it, Marco? All this stuff that we're doing to try to save everyone, do you think it's even worth it?"
The thing I remember the most about that memory was the look on her face. She looked so tired, so old. Cassie was breaking down, then. We all were, but when Cassie did, that was the real breaking point of the entire war.
If anyone else had asked, I would have brushed it off with a joke or a sarcastic comment. But it was Cassie. Stupid Cassie, who practically invented honesty.
"No," I told her. Simple as that, no.
She nodded then, and her expression didn't change, but everything else did. I guess you could say that with that answer, I broke Cassie. I broke Cassie and in that instant she became just like the rest of us.
---
When I was a kid, I used to be afraid of the rain. There was something about its power, the way that it washed the earth clean and drained the streets of their trash. The rain had some sort of revealing power in it, the ability to wash away all the lies and expose everything for what it really was.
When you think of it like that, it makes sense that I was afraid of it. I've always been afraid that one day someone will see through my lies.
Someone other than myself, that is.
--
I saw a girl on the street once who was the opposite of me. It was a year after the war, right when I had sunk into my search for materialistic authenticity.
There was a frog in the middle of the road. The girl saved it. She ran out into the road and brought it back over to the sidewalk. She released it in the grass, safely, and her eyes were bright when she watched it hop away.
She was lively and aware and helpful and caring. I was—am— a black hole of nothingness. (Maybe a green hole, because of my money.)
When she walked away, all I could think was that the frog was going to die anyway.
It doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you put it into the larger picture, you realize the magnitude of my own desolation. In allegorical terms, the frog represents humanity.
Do you see now? If the frog is humanity, then the Animorphs and I should be represented by the girl. And if I, as a metaphorical representation of the girl, do not feel that the frog's life is worth saving because it will die anyway…
Well, I think you get the point.
--
"I'd quit if I could," I told Jake. "I don't even care anymore. If I didn't feel like I couldn't, then I would quit."
Jake couldn't take that. He gave me an odd look, a mixture of disbelief and pleading, and said, "Why would you quit, Marco? Look, you're winning. You're actually beating me for once."
We were playing one-on-one at the time. Jake couldn't deal with the person I was becoming, so he wouldn't let himself accept that I wasn't talking about the meaningless and insignificant game.
We never brought it up again.
--
Claws and lasers and slugs and blood, so much blood, pouring pouring pouring and drenching me, seeping inside of me and turning me black; Slicing and cutting and skin ripped away, torn away and tearing from the inside; screams and screeches and shouts and cries of pain, betrayal, anger, hurt, confusion.
I still have nightmares.
I shouldn't have these nightmares.
Ask me now if I regret it.
---
They ask me that question a lot. Do you regret it?
They know what the answer needs to be. No one wants to hear that one of the world's heroes wishes that he never would have been. No one wants to know that by the time the war ended, Marco the Animorph didn't care about who lived and who died. Marco just wanted it to be over. Marco didn't even want to be a part of it. Marco was selfish, but no one wants to know that.
So you tell them what they want to hear. It's part of the price of absolute freedom and unlimited money: you have to tell the audience what they want to hear.
You know what else is part of the price? Your childhood, your beliefs, everything you used to be. Is it worth it? I don't know, Cassie. I'm not satisfied with the answer I gave you, but I won't be able to accept any other one.
So do I really regret it?
Maybe I do. Maybe I do regret the person the war made me.
But in the end, when I laugh and cry myself to sleep, I'll tell myself it was worth it. It's too late to change anything, now. It was worth it to lose my soul and gain the emptiness of the world. Because if that's not true, then what do I do?
Next question, please.