Marcus is such a jackass.
A fucking, lame brained jackass.
I mean, really, what kind of malfunction do you have to have to ask the kid you grounded for two months, "What's wrong?"
SERIOUSLY?
If the pencil I was holding at the time hadn't snapped, I might not have.
I turned to him and just said, "What do you think is wrong?" Yeah, I was too pissed for profanity, or even screaming.
"Okay," he says, "Stupid question." But he keeps pressing, "Why are you shutting down?"
I looked up at him and asked, "What are you talking about?"
"When you're home, all you do is your homework and work out."
"What else is there for me to do." I told him.
"You could watch TV, listen to music, read. I picked up the next book in that series you're reading and you haven't touched it."
I just shrugged, "Not interested."
"Yes, you're being punished, but that doesn't mean your life is over."
"That's what you think."
"What are you talking about?"
And... that's when I started to slip, "A restraining order? Really! You couldn't even let me see him at school?"
"Oh."
"Yeah, 'oh'. Dave is the only person I can really connect with, and you wont let me see him! Ever! How am I supposed to take that!"
"Dave is a bad influence on you. I can't have him encouraging you to put that costume back on."
"Dave has done nothing but try to STOP me from putting it back on!"
"Oh really? What do you two do when you go out? Huh? Patrol?"
"We talk. We get dinner."
Marcus gave me the strangest look then, "So you come back tired and bruised why?"
"Okay, fine. We work out. Dave wanted me to teach him to fight. But I didn't know he was going out in costume. He said he just wanted to be able to defend himself."
"And you believed him?"
"Of course I did! I trust him, unlike you."
"Obviously you can't if he's been lying to you about all this. If he even was."
"He wanted to keep me safe you ass!"
"So do I!"
"You want to change me! You want to crush who I am! You don't want ME! You want the little girl
my Dad took from you!"
"Mindy, that's not true. You know I love you. I've always loved you."
"Then let me see Dave!"
"No!"
"I can't keep this mask on!"
"What mask?"
"THIS MASK!" I screamed, pointing at my face, "This isn't me! I can't be myself around anyone but Dave!"
"You can be yourself around m-"
"NO! I CAN'T! Whenever I try you shoot me down! You're always trying to talk me into doing something 'normal'. Well guess what! I'M NOT NORMAL! I LIKE guns! I LIKE knives! I LIKE action and violence! Dave accepts that! I can talk to him about things like that with him. You just try and steer me to something else every time it comes up. You wouldn't even take me to play paintball! PAINTBALL!"
"Damnit Mindy you don't understand! You're Dad raised you in a world of comic book fantasies! He treated this like some sort of game! It's NOT! You don't understand the danger!"
And, for a brief second, I went frozen cold, "What." And then it was a raging inferno again, "WHAT! I WATCHED MY DAD BURN TO DEATH! I ALMOST DIED! TWICE! And you know who saved me? DAVE! I KNOW THE DANGER AND SO DOES HE! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?"
"What? Of course I do. I saw the video."
"No. Not that. Do you know what happened the first time he tried to be Kick-Ass?"
"Yeah. He fought those guys outside of that doughnut shop."
"No. That wasn't it. His first attempt was months before that. He got stabbed and hit by a car."
Marcus, appropriately, looked shocked, "What?"
"He tried to stop some guys breaking into a car. They stabbed him, and when he tried to get away he got hit by a car. He spent six months recovering. His bones are full of metal plates and pins, and he has nerve damage."
"Nerve damage?" he asked, like I hadn't just said it.
"Yes. Nerve damage. He lost at least twenty percent of his ability to feel, depending on where it is."
"Shit."
"Yeah. Shit. He understands what it's like. He understands the danger just as much as I do. We're the only people we can talk to about this. We're the only people who don't try and tell the other their stupid or crazy for trying to do it."
Marcus looked like what he wanted to say was, "You are stupid and crazy." Instead he said, "You can talk to me about anything."
"I want to be Hit Girl."
"No. No way."
"Why not? I'm better trained than you!"
"Better trained to KILL! I'm not going to have you go out and liter the street with bodies just because you're bored."
"Better dead in the streets then stuffed into prisons."
"No, Mindy. It's not. We're supposed to enforce the law. Not just kill those who break it."
"They aren't afraid of jail!"
"Enough of them are."
"They'd all be afraid of me."
He turned to look at me with the weirdest expression, "No," he said, "They'd just want to kill you even more. When D'Amico found out about you and your Dad, did he run? No. He tried to have you both killed. And he almost did it. I'm not going to let you risk your life so stupidly."
"Frank D'Amico and his whole organization is dead."
Marcus paused for a moment, it looked like he wanted to say something but changed his mind, "There are others who want power. Taking out someone like D'Amico only creates a power vacuum. Others will want to fill it, and the worst of the worst will be the one who get's it."
"Then we kill him, and whoever follows him. And we keep killing them until they give it up."
I didn't like the way he looked at me after that. I can't even explain what it looked like, there where so many emotions trying to be on face on the same time I couldn't make sense of them.
That's not how Dave reacted. Dave just smiled and said, "Sounds like a plan. Do you really think you could pull it off though?"
I told Dave, "Don't know. But it'd be worth it to try."
I told Marcus, "And that's why I can't be myself around you. How I know you don't want the real me."
I took my books and went upstairs, telling him I wasn't hungry. I didn't lie about that. I don't feel hungry. I don't really feel anything. The anger is gone, but... there's nothing else.
I want to talk to Dave.
Mako's Message: This is not the chapter I intended to write. Not really. Mindy wanted to write this though, and well, who am I to argue with her? Not really sure what else to say about it.
Let me know what you think.
