#evil hero

part I - part II

Tuesday

It took Civilian a few moments to adjust to their surroundings when they woke up on the couch the following day. They tossed a blanket they didn’t remember putting on to the side, yawning. Sunlight shone through the closed blinds. It seemed to be mid-morning already. They stood, smoothing their rumpled clothes, before starting down the hall to their room. Halfway there, they heard a muffled voice coming from the kitchen. As Civilian approached, they could only make out a few words, most of them curses. Slowly, they peeked inside the room, one hand resting on the doorframe. 

At the table, Villain was leaning over an enormous binder, flipping back and forth through the pages. Each time they turned one, they muttered something colorful under their breath. A mug and an empty coffee pot sat precariously on the edge of the table, liable to fall with one shift of the binder. After a few seconds, Villain’s head lifted suddenly, as if they had just sensed Civilian’s presence. The circles underneath their eyes were dark, the kind Civilian would have to cover up after a long night of doing Hero’s paperwork. It was still odd to see them in normal clothes, as they had been on Sunday. No costume, no mask. Just a regular person anyone could brush past on the street a million times and never take note of. Well. Maybe Civilian would. “Good morning,” Villain said, returning their attention to the binder after a moment’s pause. “I have… something to talk to you about, once you’re ready.”

Civilian stifled a yawn. “Okay.” They supposed a conversation was inevitable, however uncomfortable both of them were around the subject of Civilian’s captivity. With a last flick of their eyes to Villain’s hunched form, they started down the hall again to their room.

A few minutes later, they returned to the kitchen with damp hair and a new outfit just as neutral as the previous one. Villain had brewed a new pot of coffee for them. The bitter scent filled the air, reminding Civilian of countless early mornings at the office. They poured themself a mug and sat in the other chair, looking at their captor from across the tiny table. 

Villain was the first to break the silence. “I don’t have any creamer or sugar,” they said apologetically. “You can probably tell I don’t spend that much time grocery shopping.”

“Seems like you do spend plenty eating yogurt, though.” Civilian recalled all of the containers they’d seen in the fridge. 

Villain’s laugh caught them both off guard, somehow sharp and warm at the same time.. “You noticed?”

The corners of Civilian’s mouth turned upward. “Hard not to.” They took a sip of their coffee and gestured to the binder. “What’s this?”

Villain leaned back on their chair, huffing a sigh. “These are all the files I have on Hero—their powers, their associates, their deals, everything. I’ve been compiling it since they became my nemesis.”

“Am I in there?”

They flipped to a page near the very back of the binder. There were only a few lines written and no picture. “It was a lot harder to find anything out about you. I don’t know why, but Hero updated security after firing their last assistant. That’s why I didn’t recognize you when you showed up. Usually, I would have. I should’ve dug deeper—it’s dangerous for Hero to have a card up their sleeve like that.”

Civilian’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. “I can’t believe you said all that so nonchalantly. You’re such a stalker.”

“I am not!” Villain bristled at the assessment. Civilian’s brows rose higher. “Well, I am,” they admitted, fidgeting with the hem of their jacket. “But that’s my job. It's yours, too, though, you knew what you were signing up for.”

“In my defense, I never imagined this,” Civilian pointed out. 

“Fair.” Villain was quiet for a moment. “I figured I owe you an explanation. This all must be… confusing.” That was an enormous understatement, but Civilian nodded. “Hero is a manipulator. They puppeteer this entire city according to their whims. I never know what their next step is. Since they chose me as their nemesis, I’ve tried to get closer, learn more about their plans.”

“Hence, the binder,” Civilian said, gesturing to the monstrosity in front of them.

They gave a rueful smile. “Yes. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve realized, but I haven’t fought Hero in weeks.”

Civilian blinked. It seemed like the two were always fighting, every instance just blended into each other. “Really?” 

“Usually they’ll contact me at least once a week. Sometimes it's taunts or a tip, sometimes it's to tell me to meet them. Often they stop by while I’m working, to fight or just to see what I’m doing. They like to keep tabs on people.”

“Reminds me of someone else I know.”

“Well, you know what they’re like, don’t you?”

Civilian shrugged. “Kind of. They tend to keep their distance from me. They’re almost never in the office. I go in in the morning and find a new stack of paperwork and a bunch of reports to fill out. When they’re there, they just ask me to make them coffee or order food.”

“I guess I’m not surprised,” Villain mused. “But the point is, I wanted to know what they were up to. I told Other Villain and some others I know Hero talks to that I had big plans for Thursday. Nothing specific, something about Town Hall and a few innocent lives in danger.” 

“You baited them,” Civilian said slowly, “and they sent me to call your bluff.”

“Hero doesn’t like to be toyed with. I should’ve known better. But before they stopped fighting me, I felt like I was close to uncovering something.”

“A conspiracy?”

“How Hero can pull so many strings, keep everything running the way they want.”

“Maybe they’re scared you’ll uncover whatever it is they’re hiding.”

Villain scoffed, running a hand through their hair—a gesture so human it took Civilian by surprise. “Hero isn’t scared of anything. Least of all me.” 

Civilian shook their head, “I can’t believe you’re what’s under the mask.”

The criminal stared at them with a confused half-smile. “What do you mean?”

“You’re so… normal. When Hero told me to deliver that letter, I was terrified. I’d always thought that anything I did for them was for the good of the city, so I went through with it. But you’re not scary at all.”

There it was again: that laugh Civilian didn’t know what to make of. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t repeat that to anyone. I have a reputation to uphold.” 

“So why did you do any of this in the first place? Why did you become Villain?”

In answer, Villain raised their hand in the air. The binder moved along with it, as if it was being pulled up by an invisible string. With a slight shift of their finger, the binder flew to the other side of the room, landing with a small thump on the counter. “I can move things with my mind. You have to do something with that kind of power. Why not crime?” They gave a dumbfounded Civilian a self-satisfied grin, but it quickly faded. They leaned forward, eyes overtaken by an oddly intense look. “I work very hard to keep the mask up. It's the only way I can keep any semblance of sanity in a life like this. I don’t have any family or friends because it's too dangerous for anyone to know me. I save the real version of myself in this house so I don’t lose my mind. I like books and detective movies. I like yogurt. That’s the real me, and only Hero knows that.”

Civilian rocked their nearly-empty mug from side to side. “And now me.”

Villain raised and lowered one shoulder. “You’re like an extension of Hero. You don’t count.” 

“Excuse me?!” 

“I-that’s not-I didn’t-“ Villain sputtered, eyes widening. “That’s not what I meant! I didn’t try to hide any of this because Hero knows anyway, and you’re their assistant, so there’s no point! You’re not-I mean, you’re nothing like them-“

Civilian’s peal of laughter interrupted them, lasting long enough for a Villain to hesitantly join in. “You’re weird, you know that?”

“Actually, I’ve just had it on good authority that I’m shockingly normal and well-adjusted,” they replied primly. 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“Can’t I have this one thing?”

 Civilian threw up their hands. “I’m a prisoner in this house! Let me have my fun, you scoundrel.”

“Scoundrel?!” Villain put a hand over their heart, feigning betrayal. “Do you really think of me like that?”

“Give me a few seconds and I can come up with something much worse.” 

“I think I liked it better when you were paralyzingly afraid of me.”

“You mean when you choked me half to death?”

Villain winced. “I did apologize for that.”

“Not nearly enough!”

“I’m sorry! I thought my whole life had been compromised!”

“It’s not like anyone would believe me anyway if I told them you secretly loved yogurt!”

The two looked at each other, little smiles playing on their faces. Civilian wondered how long it had been since Villain had talked to someone openly like that. Probably not since they donned their criminal persona and become subject to Hero and their whims. They may have been able to salvage a life for themself, but it wasn’t much of one. 

After a while, Villain stood up abruptly, pushing in their chair with a scrape. “I should take care of a few errands. I can pick up a few things from your apartment, too, if you want.”

“Sure, some toiletries and clothes would be nice. Maybe a few books.” Anything to stave off the boredom.

“Okay.” Villain moved to leave the room.

“Wait, don’t you need to know the address?”

The criminal half-turned to face Civilian, their guilt apparent. “…uh. Yes?”

“I thought you didn’t have much on me!”

“Well, I didn’t know what you looked like, but an address is easy enough to find. You can read through the files if you’d like, by the way. Not exactly a fun read, but there’s some good information in there.”

Civilian shook their head in mock disgust. “Stalker! Scoundrel!”

“All right, I get it, I’m leaving!” Villain offered them a final smile before disappearing out of the doorway. 

Civilian sat at the kitchen table for a little longer, eventually getting up to pour out the cold dregs from their coffee mug. They spent most of the rest of the day reading through Villain’s files, which were so dense they found themself nearly falling asleep on the binder multiple times. Most of it was about Hero and their plots over the years—or at least the few details Villain had managed to discover about them. There were hundreds of question marks and crossed-out statements, along with blurry pictures and names that Villain had marked as ‘definite aliases.’ Every page made Hero look worse and worse, uncovering their criminal associates and what they’d threatened people with to get them to assist in their schemes. But none of those schemes seemed to have a clear point or end goal aside from keeping as many people as possible under Hero’s thumb. Civilian marked the pages that seemed to have the most significant information with some sticky notes they’d found to talk about with Villain later. 

When Villain got home later that night, they dropped off Civilian’s things from their apartment outside the spare room door. They found Civilian watching another old movie on the couch. They weren’t asleep yet, but their eyes kept closing for longer and longer periods. Villain sat a foot or so away from them. It was strange how much their eyes were drawn to Civilian rather than the movie. It certainly wouldn’t help them get past the stalker accusation, but… they couldn’t help it. 

Before Civilian could fully drift off, Villain turned off the TV. “There’s no way you’re going to make it through the rest of that.”

“Try-“ Civilian’s own yawn cut them off. “Try me.” 

“Come on, it's late.”

“And what exactly do I have to do tomorrow besides sit here like a damsel in distress?”

Villain arched an eyebrow.  “Are you in distress?”

“A horrible evildoer turned off my sole source of entertainment for the night, so, yes,” Civilian said sleepily, burrowing deeper under their blanket. 

They snorted. “Hardly. Now, are you getting up or not?”

“You could carry me to bed with your mind.”

“No chance.”

“Worth a shot.” Civilian stretched, yawning again before tearing off the blanket and getting to their feet. “Good night, scoundrel.”

Villain rolled their eyes. “Good night, Civilian. Sleep well.”

“How am I supposed to do that in the home of such an incorrigible fiend?” Civilian wondered while they made their way out of the living room. 

“I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out,” the criminal called after them, unable to stop the smile tugging at their mouth.

That night, just as predicted, Civilian fell asleep as soon as their head hit the pillow. Villain lay awake, staring at the ceiling, the image of a face lingering in their mind’s eye, wondering how they were going to make it past Thursday.

part IV

For a second villain stared dumbly at the text on her phone. Then she bolted from her desk towards the door. It was 10:17 - a taxi would be faster than the metro at this hour to get to midtown -

"Hey!" their coworker said, pulling out her airpods. "Where are you going?"

"Medical emergency," the villain snapped and slammed out the office door.

A precious 29 minutes later the villain arrived at the medic's apartment to find a motley gathering of capes and masks shuffling and looking suspiciously at each other in the hall. There was an air of a 2am fire drill - few supers operated on daylight hours, especially not the low to mid-powered supers the medic took on as clients, and the whole event had the awkward feel of meeting your neighbors in their pajamas.

The vigilante wore their normal black of course, but in the daylight the denim was faded and the jacket obviously cheap pleather. On the villainous side there was that grimy little clown themed duo in plain white face paint instead of their full make-up. For the heroes there was that kid goody-two-shoes try-hard - of course she'd rolled up in full uniform, minus the normal tracker camera the Hero Agency mounted on all its people now. And hero, the villain's nemesis, was there too, having jammed on the cowl and gloves over his t-shirt and jeans, just like villain had over her business clothes. He was standing in the doorway, and visibly sighed in relief as villain turned the corner.

"Oh thank God you're here," hero said and wasn't that terrifying that he had nothing flirty or snarky to say about villain's suit.

The goody-two-shoes did a double take. "Her?!" she snapped, even as she rocked her weight nervously from leg to leg. "You were waiting on her?"

"We sure weren't waiting on you to do something useful, cupcake," the female gremlin drawled from where she slouched against her partner on the hall floor, flicking her knife through her fingers.

"Yeah, didn't realize medic was a pediatrician too," the male gremlin giggled.

"Knock it off." The hero stepped aside, opened the door. "I kept them out, kept the scene clean for you."

The goody-two shoes groaned, buried her head in her hands. "This can't be happening."

"Quick, did someone bring a pacifier?" one of the gremlins stage whispered.

The vigilante pointedly stepped over the two clowns, forcing them to jerk backwards or take a combat boot to the face. "We're assuming this is about us," they breathed to the hero and villain. "What if they got hit by a bus? Dropped dead of a heart attack?"

"No reports from the hospitals or morgues of unidentified persons matching medic's description," Villain said curtly. "Checked on the way here. No communication to or amongst medic's friends and family about an emergency."

Goody-two-shoes blinked. "You... know [medic]'s real identity?"

"And that is why we were waiting on her," hero said patiently. "Now everyone shut up."

The villain curtly nodded acknowledgement, stepped into medic's apartment though it would not be necessary. The medic had disappeared from the street, at some point after they'd used their debit card to buy their usual black coffee at 7:04am and at some point before they'd failed to badge in at work by 8:15am. Still, the villain did a quick scan. The little homemade exam/treatment area had been freshly cleaned, the trash emptied. The tablet and laptop were missing from their docking station, but the go-bag was still in place under the desk.

"Y'all are gonna give me a minute with [medic] when we find them," the male gremlin drawled. "This 12 hour deadline is bullshit. They said we'd have 24 hours if they missed a check-in."

"You're not getting shit," the vigilante growled around the toothpick they were chomping.

"And they shortened the deadline because I told them to," villain said, breathing in the smell of antiseptic and bleach. She'd also told the medic to set the deadman switch to every 8 hours, not every 24, but the others didn't need to know that.

"You what?!" said the gremlins and the goody-two-shoes in unison. The vigilante choked. Even hero looked startled.

"I advised them to consider how long they could hold out under torture to reveal the abort protocol," said villain, using a tongue depressor to lift a latex glove from the kitchen trash. "I'd say medic was pretty generous. Speaking of generous, I've seen enough." She pointed to hero. "Last person you referred to medic and when?"

Hero tilted his head, realization blooming. "You," he said to villain. "Nine months ago."

One of the gremlins pointed to vigilante. "We did you! We did you last Arbor Day!"

Vigilante sighed and jabbed a thumb at goody-two-shoes. "The kid," they sighed. "I dunno when. Summer?"

The goody-two shoes swallowed. "Um," she said very quietly.

As one, the group turned to the kid. She froze, eyes going wide behind the mask. "It was - I didn't mean to!" she cried, backing up. "Just - he noticed the scar and realized it wasn't sanctioned medical care and I - and I - !"

"Okay, slow down," said hero gently, shooting a warning look to the gremlins who were both holding knives and on their feet now. "Who did you tell?"

The goody-two shoes' shoulders collapsed. She looked miserably at her toes. "Superhero. Yesterday."

Everyone flinched.

"You idiot," the vigilante breathed.

"We're going to kill you," the female gremlin said to the goody-two shoes. The male cracked his knuckles. The hero took a deep breath and pushed the goody-two-shoes behind him -

"Save that for 12 hours from now," villain said briskly and dropped the glove back in the trash. "We've got just under 11 hours to find where Superhero's got medic stashed and mount a rescue before our identities and medical records are splashed all over the internet. And frankly, I think it's going to take every single one of us to meet that deadline."

The six of them looked at each other in the shadows of the hall. The hero mustered a grin. "That's why we're all here, right?" he said. "Instead of hiding or running. Medic's saved all of us- now we save them."

"They didn't save me, I wasn't dying," one of the gremlins muttered. But no one walked away.

Since you asked so nicely,

A Revenge with Fresh Blood (A Man of His Word pt. 5)

Villain was letting them plant the explosive.

The smaller one of course, not the bigger one.

Civilian clenched their shaking hands into fists as they moved. It was the day of execution, backpack heavy upon their shoulders and blindfold tight around their eyes.

So close, they could almost taste it.

"Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three," they counted under their breath, still walking forward as instructed. They didn't really know where they were, but they could hear the echoing tap of two pairs of shoes against marble flooring, and they could only hope.

There had to a be a trick, an ulterior motive somewhere, but Civilian didn't care. They let themselves believe that they had convinced him of their necessity, or at the very least that he just found it amusing to humor them. Maybe they were bait, or just a planted casualty. By Civilian's calculations, it didn't really matter. As long as they were here, it was going to work.

"Fifty." They finished, and they reached to pull the blindfold off their head.

Let loose in a vacated hall, they immediately scanned their surroundings the second the pair of footsteps not their own retreated. The ceiling was tall and arched, with wide white columns running up the walls to support it. Wide glass panes filled the spaces in-between, giving an elevated view of the surrounding buildings and a beautifully blue sky above.

Civilian breathed a sigh of relief.

This was town hall.

Carefully, they coaxed the backpack off their arms, trying not to get too eager. It was all coming together, and the plan might just have a chance at succeeding, just so long as it didn't spontaneously blow up in their face.

Literally, or figuratively.

They followed the steps from their crash course in the rigging of explosives, twisting wires and rolling out a substantial length of cord to get them far enough away to manually detonate without blowing themselves up in the process. Checking their watch, Civilian waited for the minute hand to hit the five, following Villain's instructions to the letter.

The footsteps may have ceased, but Civilian had no doubts they were still being watched.

Not that supervision was necessary for them to be trusted to fulfill this part of the plan. It wasn't like their goals diverged at this point. Civilian wanted to lure Hero here just as bad—if not more—than Villain. They both wanted her dead just the same, though they had very different ideas as to how that was going to happen. And even there, they had come to somewhat of an agreement.

Just a tiny compromise: Civilian had promised to let Villain deal the final blow.

And that was perfectly fine with them. A dead Hero was a dead Hero, and they didn't much care what happened other than that.

The alarm on their wrist beeped, and just like that it was time.

When Civilian hit the button, they were thrown back almost instantaneously. They slid across the floor with countless chunks of quartz and marble of varying sizes. Villain must have miscalculated the safe distance—or maybe not. Either way, Civilian found themselves wishing they had been farther from the blast than just around the corner.

Smoke and dust rose, clouding their vision in a complement to their dampened hearing. Civilian groaned and curled up into a ball, wracked by coughing, but they knew they didn't have much time to waste. They were still on a mission, and so as soon as they could they slowly unfolded themselves from up against the wall and got their knees and hands planted on the previously-polished floor.

They blinked away the haze and oriented themselves towards the worst of the damage. Their stomach pulsed as they crawled their way closer to the rubble. They ran a hand under their shirt, feeling it come away wet and seeing it covered in red. Their barely healed cuts must have split open from the force, and shrapnel might have caused a few more. No matter, they just needed to keep going, keep their mind off the pain.

What better times to think of than those that lead them here?

Their thoughts drifted first to that fateful night on their couch, one of the many they spent unable to sleep—instead slaving over the journals their parents left behind until either the sun rose or the melatonin kicked in. They had been just about to call it a morning when they flipped a page and found what they had been looking for. Lazy handwriting and poorly-scrawled diagrams that they scanned with drooping eyelids depicted the very last project their mom and dad had ever worked on: a protein that broke down the protective cellular coating that made Hero so unbeatable.

The reason they had died.

Naturally, Civilian's ecstasy at finally being proven right after all those years expediently gave way to an ice cold drive for revenge. But unfortunately, dreams of easily plunging a syringe into Hero's neck and watching the life drain from her eyes were dashed once Civilian discovered the compound was too unstable to travel in a simple tube.

They had almost given up right then, right up until they pictured their father comforting their mother after a long and frustrating day in the lab, encouraging her to finish what they started using the very same words Civilian had heard him speak to them over and over again. Over scraped knees and a tiny skateboard, over Elmer's glue and a broken piggy bank.

"There's no quitters in this family." A smile and a warm rumbling laugh. "Always keep going. Always try again."

And keep going Civilian did. With access to their university's lab and accompanying equipment, they had picked up right where their parents had left off. They uncovered that the modified protein needed to be kept between 96 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit to keep it from denaturing, and it was happiest when dissolved in plasma. They just needed to try again, try a different method of transport. A different medium.

In present day, Civilian flattened themselves on the floor, yanking up the sweatshirt to reveal an abdomen slicked with blood, fresh running over dried. All they needed was an oh-so-helpful Hero to come along and put pressure to the wounds, try and stop the blood running out.

And Civilian knew she would, because there was a black drone hovering right outside the window, small red light signaling it was recording and most likely live.

It was a good thing Villain was so predictable, setting his stage on the most obvious target in town and sticking to the timeline he knew Civilian was aware of ahead of time. News agencies lived for tips, after all. It certainly wasn't Civilian's fault if he had underestimated them, lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that they 'had nothing.'

They didn't need anything to help them kill Hero because they already were what they needed. They had done it two days before pulling back the curtain on Friend's identity: infused the serum directly into their bloodstream. The research their parents never got to see finished, now running through their veins. With the help of some minor manipulation of their kidney functions, they had about a week before their body flushed it out.

All they needed was about another thirty seconds.

As predicted, the city's supposed savior came barreling around the corner and—after a minuscule glance through the glass—rushed to their side to render aid. Fingers splayed across their stomach and Civilian smiled despite the pain as the bare skin of her hands made contact with their leaking cuts.

Trans-dermal transmission hadn't been considered by their parents—at the time, there was no need for transmission of any kind—but Civilian liked to think their mom and dad weren't the only two geniuses in the family. The Achilles' heel enzyme wasn't picky about where it started, it just needed a little help getting to its initial destination.

"Hang in there, I'm gonna get you out of here," Hero assured a touch too loudly, in what could only be described as an overly-friendly customer service voice. She hastily pulled a roll of gauze from a small pack strapped to her thigh and went to work securing it across their body.

Civilian, infuriated by the performance, narrowed their eyes and spat through a groan, "You might have killed my parents," they took as deep a breath as they could get, and it was almost therapeutic to acknowledge the truth they had been hiding for the better part of a decade, "but you didn't destroy everything they made."

Hero's brow furrowed, and she glanced around the desecrated hall before responding, "Shhhh, you've lost a lot of blood."

She might not have been wrong, but that was far from the point. Civilian ignored her empty soothing phrases and instead held her disgustingly faux-kind eyes as they whispered, "It's a shame I can't kill you."

The caveat to their plan. They had promised to leave the ending of her life to Villain.

And they were going to, too. But when they heard the earnest laugh bark out of her mouth at their words, saw the glint of Hero's own blade, they snapped. Their fingers found the top of a sheath and without so much as a second thought they pulled out sharpened metal.

Hero either didn't notice or didn't concern herself with their actions.

"Honey, no one can kill me." She paused. "And I don't know what you're talking about."

An afterthought. Denying their parents' murders was an afterthought.

Strong, seemingly-invulnerable arms lifted them into a standing position. Hero swiped dust off of her brow, smearing their blood across her face in the process. Arrogantly, she still stood close to them, facing chest to chest.

Civilian watched every breath she took with thinly-veiled rage. All that oxygen wasted on someone like her, air better people could be breathing. Breaths their parents could be taking.

Hurt that was countless years old drove them forward. Civilian raised the blade, ready to finally put their parents to rest.

A loud bang froze them in place, and the hilt slipped from their weakened hand. Civilian's eyes widened as they absentmindedly staggered a step back.

Hero looked just as surprised. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. She raised her hand to her chest, touching the red liquid leaking out with the tip of one finger like it was some sort of alien goo.

Civilian stared blankly at the twin spot of blood blooming across their own chest like that didn't belong there either.

A moment of horrible, dragging silence passed before they both collapsed to the ground in twisted synchrony.

Slow rhythmic tapping was the only sound that broke through the ringing in Civilian's ears, but they couldn't be bothered to source it. They rested their head on the cold hard floor, their whole body feeling far too heavy to bother holding it up. Above them, the walls stretched and the ceiling rose up to reveal white puffy clouds.

After an indeterminate amount of time, the tapping crescendoed to a stop, causing them to instinctively turn their gaze upward. A familiar figure hovered over them and something in the back of their mind relaxed at the sight, despite the damning gun he held in his hand.

Civilian felt an overwhelming urge to beckon him closer. They wanted to hold his hand, wanted to feel his warmth. To hear his voice.

Hand half-raised they thought better of it, clarity that had ebbed now returned in an unpredictable wave. Suddenly they were back in their living room, like they had never even left the floor right outside the kitchen. Like his knife had indeed cut their throat three whole days ago.

“Ten seconds?" They rasped, "That’s it? That’s all I was worth to you?”

It didn't have the bite they wished it did.

Friend smiled. It almost looked…sad.

He crouched down, pushing disheveled locks behind their ear with a gentle hand. Leaning in, he whispered into their ear quietly, “I counted slowly.”

He rose from the ground and backed away, placing one foot behind the other towards the corner from which he had come. The drone in the window was gone, and there was only Civilian's fluttering eyelids to watch him leave. They didn’t expect him to speak again, but he did.

“You heard what I said about liars.”

It was an explanation, almost an apology.

Black twinged around their vision, and Civilian figured it wouldn’t be long now.

Two dead, one living. Two promises fulfilled, one broken.

They nodded softly. They knew this was always how it would end.

He was a man of his word, after all.

Villain was feeling great. Todays plan had gone perfectly and now hero’s own sidekick was tied to a chair in front of them. Poor sidekick probably had no idea where they were, Villain smirked.

‘I bet your praying hero is going to show up and save you. I assure you they won’t. They don’t even know where my lair is; besides, do you really think they’ll go through all the effort just to save their stupid little sidekick who got themselves kidnapped?’

Sidekick was shaking. Terrified. Now completely at the villains mercy, their identity was going to be revealed, they just knew it. And then it wouldn’t just be sidekick that will die, but their loved ones too. Hero has told sidekick about villain. Sidekick knew villain was a ruthless killer. Their fear mixed with their guilt for having endangering not only themselves but their friends too. Hero would be so disappointed in sidekick. Villain was right, hero would never bother to save them. It was their own fault that they had messed up and gotten themselves kidnapped.

Villain crouched down and reached out to sidekicks face-

‘Let’s see who’s under this disguise- which I must say, is rather pathetic. Could you not have come up with a better costume for yourself?’, villain joked.

-Sidekick flinched away, but villain swiftly grabbed sidekicks mask and roughly pulled it off their face.

‘I bet you’re-‘,

The villains grin dropped along with their stomach. This was not what they were expecting. Rage shook through villain. Sidekicks face showed nothing but absolute fear.

‘A child. You’re just a child’

Villains face softened as they tried to hide their anger from the kid that sat before them. Hero had sent a child to fight them. A child. How could hero do this? And who was responsible for sidekicks black eye? Villain knew it wasn’t them. Was it hero? When villain got their hands on them-

But that could be dealt with later. Villain needed to focus on the terrified face in front of them.

‘I’m not a child. I’m 15’

‘Who told you that was old? Was it hero? You can’t even drink yet, darling. You’re a child.

And to be clear, I am not going to hurt you. I know hero’s probably told you horrible lies about me, but I can assure you, they’re not true… at least most of them aren’t true. But I would never intentionally hurt a child’

Sidekick was shocked by the softness of villains voice, which was completely different from the roughness it had been filled with 2 seconds ago. It was just an act. It had to be. Sure, hero could be harsh to sidekick, but sidekick deserved it right? Hero was just training sidekick.

‘Are you hungry? Injured? Let me patch you up’

Villain gently brushed sidekicks hair out their face to get a better look at the purple bruises forming on their forehead. Sidekick flinched away from the hand, letting out a small whimper.

That was it. Villain vowed they would destroy hero next time they saw them. But first, they have got to help the poor kid.

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when the hero is even worse than the villain, so bad that the villain looks like an angel next to the hero.

the hero is nice and exemplary to everyone in need, but not when it comes to "bad" people. they'd actually torture any "bad" person on sight, even those who stole a piece of bread to feed their whole family, because stealing is bad.

this only feeds the villain's idea that most heroes are fake and don't actually care about others.

the "hero"'s concept is inspired by Seryu Ubiquitous from akame ga kill

CW: death threats, near-death experience, implied past character death.

"Do I have your attention now?" the villain questioned with a smile that threatened to sour on a dime, their gun held against Civilian's head. The civilian, already knocked out from the explosion, couldn't even stiffen in fear. "Or must I crack open such a precious skull before you start listening?"

The hero, for once in their life, had no witty comeback or quip. That was their lover in Villain's grasp, their everything. Hero stood tense, ready to rush forward, and yet too petrified to move.