#whisp

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Earth’s top superhero group, the Champions of Right, which the public lovingly called “The Core” (despite the obvious lack of an E in the acronym) had recently lost a lot of heroes. They’d sacrificed themselves fighting and defeating some huge intergalactic evil and the team needed new members. And now, you were one of the “core” heroes. 

You’d been called up to the big leagues, which came out of nowhere, considering you were just some lucky idiot who got their powers in a random accident. But you were strong, and you had solar/light energy-based abilities, which your agent (which you suddenly needed?) said was really great for metrics, “a real light vs. the darkness thing going for you.”

You had above average strength and agility, and it was harder to hurt you, all of it coming from stored-up solar power in your skin through your suit. What was unique to you was your ability to convert the light into what you called “hard-light energy”, where you could make things like shields and weapons; stronger when you’d been in the sun. but if you’d been fighting for too long out of direct sunlight, it would get weaker and weaker until it would just fizzle out. Then you were just a human who could take more of a beating than the average human, until you couldn’t.

You went from mostly playing backup to the big heroes, stopping small crimes and the occasional giant monster fight to being one of The Heroes that people called for all the disasters and big bads trying to take over the world or steal the Eiffel Tower or whatever stupid plot they came up with. It was honestly exhausting, but people were depending on you, so you just had to go with it. 

You’d been on the job well into the evening when you’d gotten an emergency call from headquarters. They had a lead on something they’d been looking into, and it seemed like if you didn’t do something about, they’d lose their lead. Everyone else was on call with some kind of monster coming out of the sea, and evacuating the nearby city before it could wander onto land. 

You broke into some kind of underground facility, it looked long abandoned, but you’d been told that this was where everything was going down. Your eyes glancing around the room, you were searching for signs of what you came for, gauging how you could approach the situation. Your powers weren’t as strong here, with no sunlight. You were running on reserves, but you were the only hero available, so of course you came.

There’d been a rash of abductions in the city you mainly worked in, and it had this particular villain group’s prints all over it. They were the sort of organization that was so secretive, they didn’t even have an official name. They weren’t interested in things like world domination or the like. They were known for more underground type crimes; kidnapping and ransoms, human trafficking, assassinations, and working as hired superpowered muscle for the highest bidder. 

So chances were good that they were taking people for something… not great.

It was considered “lower priority” than the monster, so they’d only sent you. You were known to be able to handle this sort of thing on your own, even before you’d gotten promoted. Team-ups were a whole thing in your world, it was never just “Hey, thanks for the help!”, it would spin into interviews and marketing and rumours of relationships, and if the other hero ever got caught up in something sketchy, you were on everyone’s radar. It was too messy for you. So being on a “team” was new to you, but they let you be most of the time.

But now that you were on top of the proverbial superhero heap, you had bigger bad guys coming at you. And you were usually able to take them on no problem.

But there was only one villain you weren’t quite sure how to handle, for a few reasons. 

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“Oh! You’re here!”

She was standing alone deep in the lower levels of the compound in a wide, dark room. The ceiling was high, but it still somehow felt claustrophobic.

She was about your height, but a tiny bit taller with those boots she wore. Her bright pink hair stood out against the dark, both of the room and her villain outfit. Her face had some bruises and bandages on it, the remnants of an old split lip still lingering… It seemed like she was still a little roughed up from your last encounter.

“I was hoping they’d send you!” She sighed a dreamy sigh, you could practically see the hearts floating over her head. She really played the lovesick fool well, and it was her go-to move with you. 

It wouldn’t be hard to get around her, but the whole thing still made you nervous. She had that usual huge, unsettling smile as she watched you come in, despite her still-healing injuries, she still smiled as she stared. She was practically bouncing with excitement. 

This had to be some kind of trap.

“It’s you again, sunshine! I missed you…” she pretended to pout, like you had disappointed her, absently twirling a curl in her short hair. “You don’t call, you don’t text… What’s a girl supposed to think?”

Brushing past her usual theatrics, you ask her what her group was trying to pull, as they usually didn’t make themselves this noticeable.

“Ignorin’ me… rude.” she huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Sorry sunny, I’m just following orders. I can’t just go babblin’ on about all the little details, not even for you.”

You demanded to know where their victims were, taking a defensive stance. 

“Oh, I can tell you that one.” she took a step closer, and you took a fighting stance. “Most of the randoms we snatched up are already on their way. But the Big Boss said I could keep a few.”

You froze, your eyes going wide. You knew it was a possibility as soon as you saw you were dealing with her, but you hoped against hope she wouldn’t.

This woman’s powers were terrifying.

She called herself Whisper. Though, she often went by Whisp as a casual alias. No legal name known. She was agile and sneaky, able to disappear into her surroundings. She was really good with a pair of knives and she didn’t like to play fair, which in all honesty was expected for a villain. But her main ability was what made her so frightening.

As her name implied, if she got in someone’s ear they fell under a kind of trance, becoming her “puppet” until she lost consciousness. No one knew how exactly it worked, but there were few who could resist it. Her victims would do whatever she wanted them to until someone stopped her, usually you. Other heroes weren’t so lucky. 

To her, it didn’t matter if her puppets got hurt or worse. She knew you were the type of hero to never leave innocent people behind or sacrifice anyone for “the greater good”. So she never showed up alone.

She snapped her fingers, and from the edges of the dark room came the shambling figures of who you suspected were your missing persons. Their eyes were red, like her own, the tell-tale sign that she’d taken control. 

You pulled up a hard light shield, the warm glow of it lighting up the dark just enough, her puppet bouncing off it before coming at you again. You spotted another coming for you from the dark and blasted a bit of concentrated light from your hand, temporarily blinding them. The shield flickered a bit, but held strong for now. You couldn’t keep it up.

They were throwing punches at you and trying to grab you, but you leapt away, not wanting to hurt any of them. They were coming from behind you now, there had to be at least a dozen. They kept coming, you knew they didn’t care about their safety. They always fought as hard as she needed them to. And they always came at you harder than other heroes because she knew you wouldn’t hurt them.

You couldn’t let her get close, even though she wanted that more than anything. 

“You better do something soon~” she warned you in an eerie sing-song voice. “You know they won’t stop.”

Knocking another hostage away, you charged up just enough for some hard light shards and shot them at her. She managed to knock two away with her knife, a short burst of light dying as she deflected them, but the third one nicked her shoulder. A long, thin burn glowed there for a few seconds before fading into the dark before she hopped back a little.

“Geez, you got me good, sunshine.” she winced, rolling her injured shoulder. “But it looks like you’re not glowing as bright as you usually do… Poor thing. Are you feeling tired? You wanna call a timeout?”

A swift kick to one of the puppet’s legs sent them down mostly harmlessly when another two jumped you, grabbing your arms and putting you in a hold while a few more leapt on too, keeping you in place. You were struggling against them when Whisper stepped into view.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time, hero…” she smiled sweetly, flipping a knife in the air. “Even back when you were just a rookie.”

She was getting too close, but you didn’t want to hurt the people she was controlling. Your mind was racing, trying to find a way out.

“You’ve always been so… timid.” she sighed, gingerly touching the edge of her knife, inspecting it as she went on. “All that power and you waste it helping these nobodies… “

One of the people moved close to her as you tried not to hurt the ones attacking you, and before you could reach them, Whisper held a knife to the woman’s throat. Her eyes never left you as the others held you down. She could see your hesitation, your fear.

“You care about these randoms, huh?” she giggled, a sweet sound to contrast the knife pressing into the woman’s skin. “I watch you run all over the city protecting them, even though they’ve never done anything for you… Keeping them from getting crushed by falling buildings, grabbing them before their cars run off collapsing bridges, flying off with them before they get smushed by a giant monster…”

“...and for what?” she frowned, grabbing the woman by her hair and yanking her head back, giving you a good view of her throat. “So they can ogle and gossip and say you’re not as good as the last batch of goody goodies? They can put you on posters and snap pics of you on their phones and think of you like you belong to them? So they can keep you under their boot, nice and docile… So they can keep using you?”

You recognized the woman she was holding. She was a hostage in a bomb threat not even a month ago, and you’d been the one to save her and get her out before the blast went off. She’d been on the news…

Were all of them… people you’d saved? You didn’t have time to think about it as you saw the knife tilt slightly, pressing into her neck, a trickle of blood trailing down to her chest.

You had to move.

You threw off her puppets, rushing Whisper. A punch to her stomach sent her flying back, you caught the woman in your arms, pressing your hand to the slight injury. But she was still a danger, she reached up and scratched your cheek with her nails before you could react. Normally, it wouldn’t leave a mark, but your energy levels were getting dangerously low.

You had to end this before someone got seriously hurt. But you couldn’t let her face get anywhere near yours.

You’d only fallen to her power once, but you were lucky that one of your more invulnerable teammates had been there to take the beating instead of innocent people in the street. Eventually, something snapped you out of it, you still weren’t sure what, and you’d knocked Whisper out before anything else could happen.

You made sure she never got close after that. 

She rolled to her side when you tried to grab her, hopping up and rounding on you with a kick to your side. You were able to block her, but she caught you off guard with a knife in each hand, swiping up at you and narrowly missing. You ducked under and tackled her to the ground, and she laughed as she hit the concrete. 

She’d landed flat on her stomach, but before she could struggle out of your grip, your knee landed squarely in the center of her back. A choked, pained cry sounded like it was squeezed out of her, but it was quickly replaced by a wheezy laugh. You grabbed her arms and secured them behind her back, throwing up a small shield at your back to keep the puppets away. 

“Oh?? You sure do like… h-holding me down, sunny…” she giggled, her eyes bright under her long lashes. A bit of blood was dripping from the corner of her mouth “You’re so warm… Let me up, I wanna t-... tell you something…”

You yelled at her to knock it off, but she just kept laughing, even though she sounded like she was in pain. You wished she would just call all of it off already, you hated the whole situation. You hated hurting anyone, even if they were a villain. 

“Th-this!” she wheezed. “This is… my favorite part!” her face was turned far enough to the side that you could see a lone red eye staring up at you. “Don’t… look away… don’t let go…”

They could’ve been sweet words, coming from anyone else and NOT in this particular situation. You dug your knee in a little harder, shouting for her to shut up, telling her to release the hostages, or else.

But of course, she did not. She called your bluff. 

“Look at me, sunshine…” She was smiling up at you, color in her cheeks. “You’re so… beautiful. And you’re gonna be mine…”

You were starting to lose your patience. The only way you were going to stop this was if you knocked her out.

But before you could do anything else, something slammed into you. Your shield had shattered, and one of her puppets was sprawled out on your back. Then another joined her, and two more. You tried to shake them off, but you couldn’t while holding onto Whisper. 

They weighed you down, pressing you closer and closer to her. It had to be hurting her more than you, but you couldn’t stop them, and she wouldn’t. Her face was too close to yours-

“There you are…”

The world suddenly went horribly quiet, and all you could see was her. You felt the other puppets get off of you, but you didn’t get up. Whisper sighed, turning in your arms, no longer pinned down. Almost being gently held by you.

“It’s been a while, sunshine… since you’ve been mine…” she smiled, touching your face. “I remember last time. You were beating the snot outta me when I crashed through that support beam. The whole upper level of that parking garage came down on us, and what did you do?”

She smiled wide, her red eyes shining as she held onto your face with both hands. 

“You dove for me! You… saved me, even though we were fighting! Imagine that!” she bit her lip, laughing. “All that rubble falling down around us and we’re just crouched together, I was all beat up but you held up that ceiling with one hand! And held me so close, protected me, even though you knew what I’d do… Not many hero types would put themselves in harm’s way for someone like me…”

She got up, and you felt compelled to get on your knees, doing just that as she stretched out the kink in her back you’d given her. 

“I’ve robbed, maimed, tortured and killed oh so many people… and you still saw my life as worth saving.” She groaned, her muscles sore and burning. “And I knew I just had to have you.”

She knelt down and pulled you to her, kissing you deeply with no warning. But you didn’t want to push her away. She felt so nice, you couldn’t control the moan you let out. She grinned against your lips. 

“I kept coming at you, and no matter what I said or did, you never ended me. My team kept busting me out of custody and you kept putting me back in, but you never let me get hurt, at least not by you…”

“Hell, sometimes I’d go out and start some good ol’ fashioned mayhem just to get your attention! And you never let me down. You beat me up good, but you always held me so tenderly when I got knocked out, like you really cared about me. Sometimes I would pretend to get knocked out and release them just to feel you hold me, I love looking up at you while you fussed over me, feeling you brush the hair out of my face, patching up any really bad wounds you could before letting the government take me ‘cause you knew they’d half-ass it. And I did it again and again…”

She kissed you again, and you kissed her back, her words still ringing in your ears. Did you… care about her? Or were you so deep under her control right then that you couldn’t even think about any alternative? All you could focus on was her lips on yours, and how you wanted to belong to her, and you told her so. You told her how much you wanted to be hers.

“You are mine, sunshine!” she nuzzled her forehead to yours, her short, pink curls brushing your cheeks. “Mine mine mine…” 

You could taste her blood on your lips, but you didn’t mind. You felt a strange, overpowering, almost mournful feeling. You told her you were sorry for hurting her.

“Oh, don’t look so down…” she cooed, your face nuzzling into her hand. “Any other goody goody puts their hands on me and I’m super pissed off, but I never minded a little hands-on time with you. I love lookin’ at the bruises and scrapes you leave after our little tiffs. I just wish you were the bitin’ type! If you left me some of those, it’d make my day!”

Watching her lovingly touch the bandages on her face, you asked her if she wanted you to bite her now. She smiled so wide, her cheeks burning.

“Tempting!” She giggled, waving you off with a huge grin. “But I’ll wait for the day when you bite me ‘cause you really want to, s’only fair.”

“But I’ll kiss you as much as I want.” she pulled you to your feet by your suit’s collar, planting another one on you. “‘Cause I see the way you look at me. How you blush when I flirt with you even when there’s mortal danger going on. How you get so shy when your teammates hear me calling you every pet name under the sun. I can feel your eyes on me whenever you and your super-buddies get me in custody with a dampener gag on me so I can’t make anymore puppets. You always look so crushed, like a sad little puppy. Like you wish I wasn’t so bad, so we could be together…”

Did you look at her that way? You couldn’t remember anymore. All you wanted to do was look at her now, touch her… feel her kiss you again and again. 

“And now, we can be together!” she grinned, practically bouncing in place with joy. “I gotta keep you out of the sun and locked up when I sleep, but before you know it, you’ll love me so much on your own and you’ll want me sleeping in your arms and we can be together all the time! Maybe I can even take you on some night jobs and we can be the best villain power couple they ever saw! Maybe…”

All her excitement seemed to wilt, and for the first time since you’d appeared to stop her, her eyes wouldn’t meet yours.

“Maybe someday… I won’t even need to use my power on you.”

She held out a trembling hand to you, and you kissed her palm, the red light in your eyes reflected in her own when she finally looked at you again. 

“Someday you’ll want me just like I want you.” She mumbled, almost promising you and herself. “It won’t be long, just… just hold me tight, sunshine…”

You did, and she sighed in your arms, nuzzling your chest. There were tears in her eyes. You asked her what was wrong, and she clung to you.

“I just…” Her voice was straining, choked up. “I just wish… you loved me for real…”

You held her face in your hands, wiping her tears away with your thumb. Her eyes went wide when you kissed her, practically melting in your arms. She was so warm. 

You told her you did love her, you had for a while. But neither of you were sure if it was true, or just part of her control. Her deepest wish.

“Say you’re mine.” she asked. It wasn’t a demand, or a command, but you still felt compelled. 

You did.

“Say you’ll always be mine.”

You did.

“Say you’ll never, ever leave me.”

You did, with a kiss to her injured shoulder. 

She called off her puppets, sending them away. You didn’t know if she would release them or if they would be part of her team’s plans, but you didn’t want to think about that. 

She wrapped her arms around your neck, and you scooped her up into your arms. It was a familiar feeling. You’d carried her before, just as she’d said, and you didn’t know if it was your own mind or her power that had the memories steeped in such a warm, comforting feeling.

“Give me a lift, sunshine.” she pressed into your chest, suddenly seeming so worn down. “I need a nap… and I’m pretty sure you broke a couple of my ribs…”

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i feel like she could've been more pathetic, but i like how this turned out. she came out more unstable than a girlfailure, but she is who she is, i suppose (plus, i have a reeeaaaalll loser girl im planning to write, so that should make up for any possible disappointment lol✌️)

the header could be better, but im ultimately happy with it. her eye placement might need some editing, but that's a problem for future me lol they always look like they're in the right place until it's done 😩