121. Perfect. (Cassie)
After the war, this is what I will cherish:
Six kids, out for a day at the beach. Two of the kids are only human sometimes, and four of the kids are only human most of the time, but today, they're all human. The sun is shining, there's a clean, cool breeze, and they've managed to find a spot that isn't too crowded.
Some of us play Frisbee. Some of us go swimming. We sit on the warm sand and eat, and laugh, and build a sandcastle.
We are not normal. We will never be normal again. But today is for normal things.
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2. Yes, I'm aware I made a mistake. (Rachel)
I don't remember what I thought. Maybe I thought they were human. Maybe I thought I could take them. Maybe I didn't think anything at all.
I remember Marco pulling me towards the elevator. I remember screaming at him, and I remember trying to get away. I don't know what would have happened if... but maybe I could have taken them.
No. Don't be stupid, I thought. You'd be dead.
And so would Marco. Because if I had managed to get away, go back, fight, I knew he would have gone back for me. It would have been a stupid thing to do, but that's Marco. When everything's calm, when we're not in danger - well, not in any more danger than usual, anyway - he's ruthless. He's good at it. But in battle, well, it's different. He does the stupid thing. He saves my life.
Jake was going to leave us both to die. It was the smart thing. It's why he's our leader.
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3. Good night. (Rachel)
I miss my dad.
I could try to find him. I could acquire a duck, or a goose. I could fly across the country. I could do it right now.
Someone would see me. Someone would stop me.
Let them try.
Every night, as I lay awake in our hut, I made plans I knew would never be acted out. Imagined finding his house, swooping through his window, demorphing right in front of him. In these fantasies I never need back up, because he's not a Controller, and going off on my own is never stupid, never ends with my capture or my death. Somehow, he is safe, and his house is secure, and he's alone. We sit at his kitchen table - he has a kitchen table - and I tell him everything. And he believes me. And he is proud.
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4. Memories. (Jake)
"Hey," he said. He rarely said anything else. He sat down at the foot of the grave. It was too dark to see the engraving on the headstone, but he knew it by heart.
Sometimes he traced the words with his fingertips. Sometimes he just sat. Sometimes he left a stone on the grave, but sometimes he didn't, because most of them were from him anyway, and sometimes he felt like it was just more weight for her to carry instead of being what it was supposed to be.
Sometimes he looked up at the sky until it was too dark for him to see. Tonight he stared at the ground.
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5. Friendship. (Marco)
After you, the most paranoid security freak ever to have lived, blow your cover, twice, endangering the lives of both your family and your friends, and thus the last great hope for the continued freedom and survival of both humanity and Earth itself, resulting in the need for you to fake your own death and go live amongst the space goblins, rendering you unable to go to school or be seen in public at all, let alone have access to any sort of media whatsoever, well... it's nice to know that, should anything like that happen, hypothetically, you'll still have your friends. Friends who'll let you crash at their place in the middle of the woods. Friends who have the internet. And a television.