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when your phone breaks and you resort to your moms laptop to log into your socials
The hero was halfway home when they got the call.
“I’m sorry,” the person on the other end said, voice wet with tears, and the hero knew.
They knew that tone of voice, they knew this sinking in their stomach. They knew.
Their phone shattered against the ground, fingers numb.
Their friend was dead.
Again. Again, again, again again–
“Fuck,” the hero muttered, heart clenching. “Fuck.”
They were crying by the time the villain appeared next to them, and it took everything in the hero not to punch them.
“I don’t know why you do this to yourself,” the villain said, eyeing their tears.
“What, love?”
The villain tipped their head slightly. “No. Love things you can't keep.”
The hero was sure it would kill them this time, the heartbreak. They had thought after enough centuries, enough people loved, enough funerals attended, death would be an old friend and not a bullet wound. They had hoped it would hurt less.
But it still hurt, and death was chronic.
“What, you expect me to be you? Cold, killing people for fun?”
The villain raised an eyebrow at their tone.
“I don’t kill people for fun.”
“Don’t you?”
“No,” the villain shrugged a shoulder. “I just don’t care if there are casualties. Besides, not everyone is a good person in the first place. I’m doing the world a favor, half the time”
“How can you say something like that,” the hero hissed. “Do you hear yourself? Do you hear how awful you sound right now?”
The villain gave the hero a long look.
“Hero. You fight the worst people this world has to see for a living, and you’re standing here saying they deserve a second chance?”
“Yes,” the hero snapped. “I am.”
“You are a bleeding heart,” the villain observed. “It’s amazing you haven’t turned into me.”
“You and I, we are not the same.”
The villain half-smiled. “Aren’t we?”
“Shut up,” the hero looked away, chest tight. “These people, these lives, are so precious, so, so fragile, and you take them away like it is nothing.”
They were shaking, and they weren’t sure if it was rage or fear or something else. They couldn’t stop. The hero wondered if this was what death felt like. If this is what it felt like to have your body betray you, longing for the ground and solitude of a grave.
“I am not going to stand here and debate morality with you when you are breaking apart at the seams.”
“I’m fine,” the hero managed. They willed themself to stop crying.
“Death is inevitable, and you are hiding from the truth of that.”
The hero’s throat closed before they could respond.
“Your friend is dead, and no matter how much you fight, you will not win the war against death a second time. Do you hear me? You and me, we already won. We are time’s children. We will be here longer than ‘here’ will be. Death has no claim to us, and yet you keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing, because you cannot bear the weight of this gift.”
The hero’s knees gave out, and the villain caught them.
“Stop letting the guilt of being alive break you.”
“I don’t want this anymore.” It was a pitiful thing as it fell from their mouth. Something broken, worn out and tired.
The villain rested a hand on the back of the hero’s neck. “You cannot undo this any more than you could the last time you tried. I promise.”
It almost sounded like an apology.
“I am tired of loving precious, fleeting things.”
“So don’t,” the villain said easily.
The hero closed their eyes. “How?”
The villain hummed, voice soft. “Love me for a while. Until the burden of existence fades. I won’t leave.”
“You say that like loving you is easy.”
“It isn’t. But you’ve done it for centuries–what’s a few more?”
“You kill people.”
“No. I just don’t save them, and I don’t carry the guilt of not saving them, because it isn’t my job.”
“Yeah.”
“It isn’t your job either.”
The hero had known that, centuries ago. Somewhere along the way of funerals and eulogies, it had been hard to keep believing it wasn’t their fault when they were always the one left alive.
So they had stopped.
“Promise you won’t leave?”
“I couldn’t leave you if I tried.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah,” the villain agreed. “But never to you.”
Just like the hero had known it to be true when they were both fifteen, mortal, and wild, the hero knew it was true now.
And so, like every time this had happened before, across centuries and continents and deaths, the villain brushed away the hero’s tears; and they went home.