How Much I Know - a Renegades | Marissa Meyer fan fiction

Chapter 13

"Father!" Mara exclaimed, hopping up from the table to give him a hug.

"Mara, are you all right?" he asked, stroking her face.

"I'm as right as I can be." She looked away. "I'm a prodigy. And I'm stronger than most. Apparently. But I don't feel powerful. I am honestly just trying not to embarrass myself. I don't have any idea what I am doing." She looked at him desperately. "If I can't be a normal person, how can I help other people?"

Her father answered slowly, "You said you were powerful? Power is not always evil, Mara. How can you help people if you don't have any power to your name? Being a prodigy only means that you have more of a capacity to help others." He looked her in the eye. "Stop being afraid of what you are."

Mara took a deep breath. "I will."

"I know you can do it, Mara. By the way, what did you make for dinner?" he asked, eyes scanning the room. 

"Canned soup again," she replied, dishing it out into two bowls and setting them on the table. "Is Jeffery joining us?"

"He's out with his girlfriend again." A glint of regret passed over his face. I was gone so quickly Mara wasn't sure if she'd imagined it. "I wish I had tried harder. He's still my son. I love him so much... But I fear it's too late for him."

"But father, it's not your fault that mother left. He blames you for that. It's his loss, not yours," Mara tried to comfort him. "Blaming yourself will not help anything."

"Mara, you don't understand. I swore to protect him. To teach him; to be his father. But... I failed. She trusted me and I failed. Regret is the worst plague a person can encounter. And I have a lot."

Mara had never heard this before. Her father had regrets?

"I devoted my life to others because of how I had wronged them in the past. So I could have at least something to be proud of." He sniffled, pulling out a handkerchief. "No one is kind without reason, Mara. No one. Not even you, dear."

"I'm protecting myself," she realized. "I don't want to live with the memories I hate. Kindness is... no one is kind. It's an illusion of selflessness. In reality, we just don't want to regret our lives."

Mara became silent. She knew it was true in the core of her being.

"Ignorance is bliss. It truly is," he said.

"You taught me to fight ignorance. You taught me to be strong. Why? It obviously wasn't for my own benefit," Mara wondered.

"You have to be strong because if it is not you, it is no one. You must show strength for the weak who can't show it themselves. I have sacrificed you to this world of selflessness. I am sorry," he explained.

"Father, why do you apologize? You have shown me reality. What I see is not pleasant, but it is real. Knowledge is power. I do not resent you for showing me that. I love you that you are willing to sacrifice me as well as yourself for the rest of the world."

"I honor that you say that. But soon you will hate me, just like Jeffery did. And maybe you'll be right to."

"No! Father, I could never hate you!" Mara yelled, surprised that her father could imagine such a thing. 

"If only I could believe that," he replied. "Anyways, you didn't say what your power was."

"Oh," said Mara, taken aback by the sudden subject change, "You can't tell anyone, because I'm so powerful it would be dangerous for anyone to know about me, but I trust you won't. My power is," her voice became a whisper, "I can resist all other prodigys' powers."

Her father's jaw dropped. "That's..." he was at a loss for words.

"Dangerous?" Mara supplied. "Valuable? Threatening? Scary? Enviable? Strong? Unreliable?"

"Yes," he said, still in awe. "But how did you hide it for so long?"

"I don't know. It just kind of happened," she said shyly.

He studied her for a long moment, before relenting, "Our soup is getting cold," and sitting down to eat. He still looked contemplative throughout the meal.

"Did you meet any new friends?" he asked as they were finishing their dinner.

"Yes. One, and I'm not sure about two. There's Max, who's ten years old and has this," she had to think of the right word to explain his condition without revealing too much, "disease that results in him having to live in this glass quarantine. He's a good person and has been really lonely in there. I'm trying to make him feel less lonely by being his friend. But he really is great to interact with. Then there's Karen. She won't tell me what her power is, except a bit about it being 'not really offensive and might be difficult to resist.' I don't know. She was the one that met you last night. She looks unhappy all the time and only really smiles when she's around the previously mentioned Max. They have an odd relationship. I can't figure it out, but I've only seen them together for a couple hours." She started rambling. "I wonder what it is about her, though. I mean, never smiling? That would be pretty awful. What traumatic event would she have to go through to get that kind of personality? And she squints her eyes shut sometimes and holds her head. She looks like she's in pain. And she jumped when I told her 'Reality is fleeting.' It's kind of weird."

"That's intriguing. I think you should get to know her so you can understand what's troubling her. No one should have to go through that alone," Mara's father suggested.

"I agree, but she doesn't really seem that open to me. Or anyone, really," Mara commented.

"Let her take her time. She'll tell you when she's ready."

"I hope so. She's faced with so much..."

"I know. Trust me, she'll tell you. Just not so soon." He excused himself from the table and left for his bedroom from which she could soon hear snores.

"I wish I could help you, Karen," she whispered into the air.