With a great effort of willpower, Asher discards his first response (needling Marlo), and then discards his second response (pointing out that he isn't needling Marlo and it's hard because the comment he thought of was very clever). 

"...I'm not naive."

"I know you aren't." 

"I know that sometimes you gotta kill Nazis, I just. --The world is a horrible place. I watched kids get burned to death in front of me, I've talked to moms who watched their kids starve to death or die of diseases we can prevent, I've heard Lev talk about his parents. Sometimes I look at these spreadsheets and there are just these columns of numbers and every one of the numbers is a dead kid and-- and I can't even wrap my brain around it, I could spend weeks trying to think about every one of them and I would just scratch the surface of it. And there's all kinds of suffering that I don't get to see because I'm a billionaire and being a billionaire means you're constantly walking in this bubble of protection from other people's suffering, which is how I managed to be twenty before I figured out that I was a serial killer, and my dad never did. And the only part of this horrible, horrible world I have any control over is what I do. Maybe sometimes you can improve the world by doing the right horrible thing but-- there's just so much of it, and I don't want to add to it at all. And it seems like the best thing to do in general if I want the world to be better is to decide to be better than the world, as best as I can, every day, even though it's really hard. To try to be merciful because the world isn't at all." 

He takes a moment to collect his thoughts and examine what they actually are. 

"— I grew up in Brooklyn. People now say that nobody in America knew what was happening in Germany, and maybe in most places that was true, but in Brooklyn we were surrounded by people hearing from their relatives and by people who conspicuously weren't hearing from their relatives, and plenty of people knew. And the world collectively looked at Germany — and Japan, for that matter — and said 'we just had a war; this time, let there be peace,' and they did nothing. 

And that wasn't because they didn't know the world was horrible. It was because they knew the world was horrible, and that war is horrible, and they decided that keeping their hands clean was more important than helping. That they didn't have control over what anyone else did, only what they did, and they didn't want to add to it at all. And I don't know if you're doing that, it's not the sort of thing that's easy to see except in retrospect, but I recognize that in — a lot of the things you say." 

"And sometimes you're like 'the Taliban is awful, we're going to bring democracy and freedom and women's rights to Afghanistan,' and the only thing that happens is a bunch of people die. World War II was a just war, but what they've said about every war after that is 'oh, it's just like World War II.' --And if I'd been in charge of things we would have taken in refugees."

"And sometimes you firebomb Dresden; I'm not claiming that all wars are a good idea, just that — there's a specific reasoning for why we should avoid them that reminds me." 

"I do put on a giant robot suit and punch people and turn a blind eye to y'all killing people, there's a limit to my pacifism."

"This is true." 

He resists the urge to needle Marlo about how bad he is at saying sentences with content.

"'Friends' is maybe a bit unrealistic but, uh, friendly people working for the same goal of Sasha and Z being happy and the world not blowing up?"

He has already admitted to being terrible at saying sentences with content. 

"Sounds like a good thing to aim for." 

"--Also I'm dating Sasha. You can make a judgmental face at me now."

"No I can't, we're on the phone, you can't see my face. And I'm holding off on judgmental faces until I ask him about it." 

"I wouldn't ever do anything that would hurt him. Uh. Intentionally, anyway."

"I believe you. I'm still going to hold off on judgment until I talk to him." 

"That's totally fair. Anything else we should talk about?"

"Not that I can think of. — Thank you for calling." 

"Welcome."

Sasha goes home that afternoon and manages to sleep through the night. 

He still isn't trying in school, but — he's happier. He doesn't shrink. He smiles down at his phone instead of looking like he's about to cry. 

He vanishes into the night more nights than he doesn't, to fight a giant robot in the Bronx or to visit his boyfriends in Manhattan. His parents worry, but he comes home in the morning shining more often than he comes home hiding injuries. 

MENACE TO THIS CITY, proclaims the Daily Bugle, and Sasha laughs.