Wake Me Up Before You Go

“Defender of the Ancients”

“If I do not heal what was broken in you, then why am i here at all?”

There is something in you that constantly feels the need to fix the errors in me. I, wanted you to stay, pretended to be broken parts. Little did you know, I was glued back together the very first day you held my hand and I leaned on your right shoulder. You shared your bite with me, drank my milk tea, left notes for my birthday, and tagged me in memes. I thought perhaps you will be my Carl, the Defender Of The Ancient. I knocked on your door with baked goods because you will be going to the battle with a head start and a note I slid under the ribbon. I do not know what went wrong along the way, maybe the dire captured your heart or that you did not equip yourself enough items to be able to come to my rescue. But somewhere along the line, I learned to be strong on my own. I stopped relying on the spells you had to invoke to save my heart. I learned to set myself aside for the better of you. Not long after, I, someone who needed to be saved, became a savior myself. I watched you build yourself up as our gaps grew farther. In the end, it does not matter if the dire decides to seize your heart until the end of time or has enough sympathy to return it back to you. What matter is, I will always have my tele-porter ready when your day gets darker, when you use up all your abilities, when the cool-down feels like forever, or when you just need a distraction. And when you need to hide, I will cast a smoke for you to stand under. But if, if you really get back your heart someday, I hope you realize that I was all along pretending to be broken just so you could always be around. I promise to never deny your call to arms. When you are too exhausted to continue, I hope you see that I always have my healing wards ready, no matter the mana drainage.

The Dire did keep your heart and sealed it closed. Our gap really did grow further. I kept waiting for that call to arms that never came.

Instead, one day I woke up to a scroll from you, saying all the things you were too afraid to say back then.

For a brief moment, I was angry.

Angry at all the could-have-beens.

At the fact that we were both Radiant once, until somewhere along the way you turned Dire.

But it turns out the villain in our story was never the Dire.

And it was never you.

You did care.

But the war I was waiting for never came, and the battlefield slowly disappeared.

So you made Dire your home.

And I built mine somewhere back in the Radiant.

Maybe in another life.

But not this one.

In this life, you are someone else’s Carl.

And I —

“I would happily eat any salmon pizza, only if it was ordered by you.”, you said when i was whimpering about ordering an awful tasted pizza.

“The dough is perfect, though. In fact, i have never eaten a dough this crusty.”, reassuring me like there’s not an ounce of regret leaving the decision up to me.

At the end of that night, you finished the whole pizza all by yourself and planted a kiss on my cheek.

It’s been years since then. Today he came and said “Timing is a bitch, aint it?” - “Indeed.”