read @literally-just-kirby’s Rescue snippet and fell in love, so I thought I’d take a shot at a continuation 💕🦋✨ i hope it’s up to par!
“Are you stalking me?” was the first thing that came out of the villain’s mouth, once they’d opened the door for the hero.
“Glad to see you’re well, too,” the hero muttered. The jacket over their head really wasn’t doing it for them—rain continued to pelt them without mercy, and they were pretty sure they were two seconds short of getting struck by lightning. They stared at the villain.
“You gonna let me come in?”
It took a moment, but the villain gestured them past the entrance. Outside was a barren landscape, but the hero was stunned by the sight that had greeted them inside. Yes, the couches were faux leather, tattered at the seams; the walls were peeling, not a family picture to be spotted; and the windowpanes were scratched within an inch of their lives. Yet, all that paled in comparison to the large bookcase at the far end of the living room.
And a large bookcase it was. On toeing off their muddied shoes, while the villain attended to the teapot in the kitchenette, the hero allowed their bare feet to carry them over to the shelves. Raised three fingertips to spine after spine, some pertaining to fallen empires, others to rising kingdoms.
“You into history?” the hero prompted, flipping through a particularly heavyweight tome.
“Not history,” the villain replied. When the hero tilted their head, it was to the villain’s shrouded form, from where they stood a ways off with a tisane in tow. “Just the people who create it.”
The hero nodded to the teacup. “Do I get some, too?”
“How did you find me?” the villain demanded.
“Why, a thorough reconnaissance, of course.” The hero helped themselves to the seat nearest. Water dripped off their hair and soaked the armrests. “I conjured up a very clever gambit, investigated your partners’ whereabouts, sought them out—”
“They sold me out, didn’t they?” the villain interrupted. The hero couldn’t help but start at the crack in their voice: just about imperceptible, but still with the startling ability to stop the hero dead in their tracks.
“It was never about camaraderie to them. Just bribery and competition and how to best benefit from me.”
Something had sealed the hero’s throat shut. Fingers tangled in their wet strands as they scrambled for something to say—largely because the villain had already said it. The villain’s so-called comrades had double-crossed them in the blink of an eye. For whatever reason, their tongue had grown thick at the prospect of confirming as much.
They were spared, in the end, by a sharp turn of the villain’s head.
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. More importantly, why did you find me?”
“To check on you,” the hero said, simply.
The villain’s eyes had gone wide. “To check—”
“You’ve been missing.” Here, the hero set their chin. “Since the fire. No evil schemes, no fights, nothing. What gives?”
“You can’t be serious,” the villain said.
“If you think I came all the way here to tell you a joke—”
“Because I can’t fight you,” the villain cut in. Their grip on their cup had become bone-white. “I’ve been taught two things. That we fight our enemies, and that we aid our allies. So I can’t fight you.”
The hero’s world slammed to a halt.
“Since when were we not enem—”
“Enemies don’t help enemies out of fires.” It was the villain’s turn to cut the hero off. “Enemies don’t save their enemies’ lives.” The hero couldn’t help thinking it an astounding mixture of sentimental and robotic.
“All the same,” continued the villain, “I am no longer sure what to make of us. It is most imperative to lie low until I figure it out.”
“Friends,” the hero said.
The villain’s gaze snapped to theirs. It begged a million and one questions.
“People who help other people out of burning buildings are called friends,” the hero explained—when, in reality, their mind had summoned a word different in its entirety.
This word they would keep to themselves. For now, at least.
“Friends . . .” Had the hero not known any better, they would have gone so far as to say the thought seemed to have sat well with the villain. “That did not fall in line with my deductions. But it’s close enough.”
The hero’s brow furrowed. “Your deductions?”
“Why don’t we hear them, then?”
As was usual, the villain did not hesitate in answering, and rather frankly at that:
“I deduced that you’d fallen in love with me.”
The hero spluttered. Choked. Brought a hand to their chest.
“I am not in love with you! I was just trying to do the decent, humane thing! I couldn’t leave you in there in good conscien—”
“In that case”—something told the hero the villain had stopped listening at “not in love with you”—“have this.” They shoved the teacup into the hero’s hands. “And consider it a platonic gesture. Because, as you may have very well realized, falling in love with me is a trap.” Again with the matter-of-fact tone, this time ten times more infuriating. “One I’d rather we both avoided.”
Then the villain pivoted on their heel and disappeared back into the kitchenette, no more cryptic words to be said.
A trap . . . Idle musings, as the hero took a sip. Chamomile tea.
The hero supposed they might end up being the one who needed rescuing, after all.
