I’d love to hear more about the hero/villain pair in your “17.05.2022 Prompt.” Any story about them would be great—maybe how they met, or a day in the life, or anything that moves you about them!
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"I am not a good person," the villain said. "It's crossed my mind a thousand times to break you, shatter you, change you so you will never fight me again. Never even try. Never tell me no."
"And yet." The hero stood in front of them. "Here I am."
There was a question there; no protest, they both knew the villain could do it.
The villain reached out, tracing their finger down the hero's cheek, almost marvelling.
"There you are." They met the hero's eyes. "Still you."
"And you want me to always be me, even when I aggravate."
"Yes." It was barely above a breath. "What a cunning trap you are."
“You think I’m a trap?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Traps are deliberate.”
“And your heroism is not?” The villain smiled – or, at least, it was something like a smile – because they both knew that particular answer. The hero may not have intended to stop, to imprison, them in quite this particularly way, but they had intended to make the villain stop. Or die trying.
The hero swallowed.
“I don’t think love was meant to be a trap. My feelings—”
“Your feelings are not the trap. Mine are.” It wasn’t that the villain was entirely against seeing the hero hurt; in a controlled way, that ran no danger of changing the essential essence of them. Only, perhaps, that the villain could not bear the weight of the hero’s disappointment. “Your feelings…” The villain’s hand skated down, fingers wrapping gently around the hero’s throat. “Your feelings make no sense.”
“Because I would love something, someone, that could destroy me but wouldn’t?” It was the hero’s turn to smile – or, at least, it was something like a smile, because—
“You could not destroy me.”
The hero raised their brows. “What is you going against your every instinct, your every decisive victory, your nature, except a form of destruction?”
The villain swallowed. Their fingers flexed on the hero’s neck, tightening fractionally, but it was never their hands that were the truly dangerous part of them. The villain’s eyes bore into the hero, and their powers could bore into the hero’s brain, drill and mine, extract and shape, through that gaze.
“Rebirth,” the hero said, softly. “Out of the ashes, something new.”
“I could be something worse, simply not to you.”
But they both also knew the villain couldn’t. Such was the nature of villain’s and heroes: one of them had to win. And the villain could win easily, except…
Except. Exception.
The hero stepped a little closer still, palms pressing against the villain’s thundering heart.
“Part of me still wants to break you,” the villain said. It was a confession, a reproachful admonishment of the hero’s goading, of their bravery. It was not, really, a threat. “Get in your head. You could change your mind. Decide on an even greater destruction. I could make you – your feelings—”
But, then, they wouldn’t be the hero’s feelings anymore. All the villain would have was a mirror. Yet one more for the collection.
“What would you ask me to do?” No. “What would you tell me to do?”’
The hero’s pulse fluttered wildly against the heat of the villain’s fingers.
The villain’s mouth dried, gaze roaming over them, seeking yet another trap. To say it aloud felt like yet another admission, their secrets unspooled on a honeyed rope. Because if they asked…if they asked the hero to kneel, in this conversation, with that look on the hero’s face, the hero would. And it would be intoxicating. And that, that was the very smallest and basest of their desires, of what they wanted. A token gesture.
“If you no longer loved me,” the villain said. “I’d be free. I could do anything to you. You’d already be gone. Not mine, not…” They wet their lips.
But then, if the hero was already gone, they would not exactly be the hero anymore. Not the villain’s hero. Who, against all of the horror and the odds, loved the villain.
“I know.” The hero met the villain’s eyes, those eyes that would rend and twist and change the tide of battle in an instant. “But I will always love you.” They leaned up, entirely ignoring the hands around their throat, to press a kiss to the villain’s cheek. Sweet. Chaste. It was the first time they’d done anything of the sort and it left the villain weak at their knees, like they might be one the one to crumple and hit the floor. No matter their devastating power.
The villain closed their eyes.
“Monster.” It was, once again, barely above a breath.
The hero laughed, quietly, not entirely with humour, and yet. The love had never been a plan, never intended as a trap or a trick, it just happened, but…
“Of course,” the hero said. “Why else, would you ever love me?”
The villain’s eyes snapped open.
Love. Yes. They’d never said it, but…
They both smiled, or at least, it was something like it.
“Kneel,” the villain said.
And the hero dropped obediently, entirely by their own will and intention, looking up at them with that knowing in their eyes. With choice, and choices could be changed, and the villain could take that choice – make it so the hero wanted nothing more than this, got out of the way, never got in the way. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t.
And so, even as they stood over the hero, entirely too affected by the sight, it didn’t really feel like power at all.