Untouchable ~ A Jared Leto/MARS Fanfiction

Chapter Seven

"And you did."

I nod, and glance outside where Shelby's finishing cooking breakfast. Birds apparently have caught the scent of the food cooking and are filling the trees around the clearing, chattering noisily. With remarkable likeness, she chatters back at them. "Yeah. I did. Thank God I did. Now I can't imagine life without my little girl."

"She's a beautiful rare soul, like her mom. But I'd have liked to have met your dad. It sounds like he was a very good guy."

I nod again as a rock forms in my throat. "The best. I miss him every day." I clear my throat. "So. Your turn."

"Oh. We'd be here all day if I started spilling my deep dark secrets." There's a teasing glint in his eyes, but underneath that I can detect something more, a wealth of things, actually. When I don't respond to his light deflective comment, he sighs deeply and I see the teasing glimmer fade. "All right. Here goes. A lot of times, but especially when I'm on tour or traveling to do promotion work or an appearance at a gala event, I lay in bed at night in some random ultra-luxury hotel, thinking about and wondering what it would be like to be normal. Sometimes that wondering isn't wondering at all. It's wishing."

"Really? You sometimes wish you weren't famous?"

He passes a hand over his face. "You don't have to tell me, Lanie. I know how it sounds. Right now there's a garage band in some midwestern town playing dive bars and working their asses off at some shitty day jobs, hoping for that one big break that most likely will never come. There's a factory worker in another town slogging away twenty hours of overtime a week just to pay the bills. He turns on the TV or the radio or whatever and here's Jared Leto in his face, a guy who's been blessed with the ability to make a hell of a living doing what he loves to do. As rare as this level of success is, to complain about any part of it makes me sound like I'm a spoiled, ungrateful, whiny little bitch. Maybe I am, I don't know. It's not because I'm not honored that people love my work, my art, because I put my entire heart and soul into what I do and I'm proud of the work I've put out there. I can't imagine doing anything else with my life.

"But sometimes, it's too much. The never-ending attention. The demands. The expectations. The utter lack of autonomy, of any semblance of a private life. Every word, every move, everything about my appearance being dissected. Never being allowed to screw up and say something dumb, or to have a shitty day and be pissed off like everyone else. Being loved and worshipped for what I do, not for who I really am. The fact is, Lanie, I don't belong to myself but to them. All of them. The fans. The industry. The cultivated image. Everyone but myself, really. I've got money, yeah. I've got all this status and everything at my fingertips. With nothing more than my name and my face I can pretty much get anything and anyone I want. But I owe them and no one lets me forget it. It's crushing. It's suffocating. When it comes down to it, Lanie, fame is a glamorous form of indentured servitude."

I'm nothing short of stunned by this unprecedented glimpse into Jared that I'm quite sure few have ever been allowed access to. A glimpse that, if he thought I was a fan or even slightly aware of his existence before finding him broken and bleeding, he probably would never allow me. "I guess..." I finally say."I guess you have to either become a flaming narcissist or go insane."

Jared smiles grimly. "Narcissism or insanity? I've learned to strike a little bit of balance between the two. Ask anyone who's gotten close to me. Especially the women in my life."

Oh. That's a place I have no desire to explore. Fortunately I don't have to, as just then Shelby appears in the doorway of the hut with a tin plate. "Breakfast is ready," she announces. "But he doesn't want to eat his."

Speaking of spoiled, ungrateful, whiny little bitches, I think to myself as I take the plate from Shelby and bring it to Jared. "I'm not really surprised," I tell him as I help him sit up.