Something I came up with once for the prompt/trope "We're not so different you and I"
The villain has been fighting the heroes and has just knocked the main hero away, weakening himself in the process, only for the lancer to show up to fight him. He is way more skilled than the villain realized, so when the lancer has him on the ropes he pulls the "we're not so different" card.
The Lancer freezes as he says this.
Everyone else kinda flinches because they have noticed the similarities, but they weren't intending to bring them up.
The villain starts to smirk...
Then... the Lancer starts to LAUGH.
He starts laughing, low, a little unhinged, but like he's just heard the funniest thing ever.
He laughs for a long time.
When he finally calms down, still chuckling every so often, he looks dead into the Villain's eyes... And smiles.
"Oh, you have no Idea do you?"
Here's how it goes.
Once there was a man. The man was like every other man, he had a wife, had a job, a couple of kids, average.
But he didn't want to be average.
He couldn't stand just being average.
So he went looking for more, and left nothing in his wake.
He searched and dug and found and stole, but it was never, would never be enough.
He wanted more, he needed more, and he didn't care what he did to get it.
Power, wealth, prestige, fear.
All the world would never satisfy him.
Others took offense, others sought to stop him, a brave, foolish, stupid band of heros.
One of them was familiar.
One of them reminded him of before, when he had so much but so little.
He hated remembering before.
The heroes came...
The heroes died.
And when nothing is ever enough, how easily can you turn the world to ash.
When everything and everyone has fallen, and you're the only one left standing among the corpses.
How long until you go mad?
How long after until you go sane?
How long would you search for a way back, a way to fix everything?
All the time in the world and no one to stop you.
And if you do find a way back, hurt and weak and drained of almost all your ill-gotten power, who would you turn to for help?
Who would you seek out, to whisper all your hidden weaknesses to, to train harder in their chosen weapons, to teach each hidden path and secret of your old followers to while you recover?
Who kept bringing you closer to the fire, sharing their stories and their meals, their victories, and in the quiet dawn hours, their sorrows?
Who gave you back that which you hadn't even realized you'd been searching for?
Who would you choose to die for when the time came?
Face to face with your sins, staring down your regrets, and all you can do is laugh.
Laugh and laugh, for everything ruined and lost and broken and dead and not dead and maybe not now, not like that, never like that again.
You laugh.
You stare into your own eyes.
As your sword swings, catching your other's neck.
"Oh, you have no Idea do you?"
