The Man Who Needed No Reason
Marcus did not know when it began.
And the question did not bother him.
In truth, he had only asked himself a few times, and each time he arrived at the same conclusion:
It did not begin.
**He had always been this way.**
That thought was enough for him.
There had been no morning when he woke up and decided to become evil. There had been no great tragedy that made him hate the world, no cruel father who planted violence inside him, no mother who denied him affection, no betrayal that turned him into a man who trusted no one.
He needed no excuse.
And that was what made him different from so many others.
Other people needed a story to come before their actions.
Marcus did not believe his actions needed a story.
He did something because he wanted to.
And as a child, he did not yet know that others called this evil.
He only knew that there were things people did, and things they did not dare to do.
And he watched.
He had always watched.
When children fought, he was not interested in who had started the fight.
He watched who ended up afraid.
He watched faces.
The trembling hand.
The lowered eyes.
The voice becoming quieter.
And he noticed something simple:
The person who became afraid first usually lost.
One day, he saw an older child take something from a younger one.
The younger child cried.
The others laughed.
Marcus approached.
He did not help the younger child.
He did not join the older one.
He simply stood before them and asked the younger child:
— Why did you give it to him?
The child looked at him without understanding.
— Because he took it.
Marcus looked at the older child.
Then he said:
— And if you hadn't given it?
The younger child shrugged.
He said nothing.
Marcus continued looking at him for a moment.
Then he said:
— Then you gave it to him.
The child did not understand.
Marcus did.
He understood something that would remain with him for years.
Power did not always need to take.
Sometimes it only had to make the other person believe they had given.
From that day onward, Marcus began watching people differently.
He saw what they could not see in themselves.
Their fear.
Their needs.
Their desire to be accepted.
Their need for someone stronger than themselves.
And he did not despise those things simply because they existed.
He despised people because they possessed them and pretended they did not.
He grew older.
And the idea grew with him.
He did not become angrier.
He became calmer.
And that was his first problem.
Anger could disappear.
But the calm that came after conviction did not need heat.
As he grew, he discovered that people could be moved more easily than he had imagined.
All he needed to know was what they feared.
Sometimes, all he needed to know was what they loved.
Fear and love, in Marcus's eyes, were not opposites.
They were two faces of the same weakness.
Both could make a person do something they would never have done alone.
And from that came Marcus's first idea of power:
**Never need anything.**
No person.
No place.
No love.
No forgiveness.
No one.
Because whatever you needed could be used against you.
He did not know then that this idea would eventually become the prison he could never escape.
