There were tears in the hero’s eyes.
At first glance, they had looked dead. Blood soaked through their suit and the villain was sure they had felt bones break when they’d hit their enemy several times. They’d been sure the hero was dead this time but they were still breathing. Still responsive.
The villain cursed in their mind. How many times had they been in this situation before? With the hero on the ground or the villain on the ground and the other just staring, too stunned to utter a word. Too stunned by their own actions and their own lack of humanity.
How many times had one of them stopped for a second, right there? Had hesitated and asked themselves if this was their true self? How many times had they recalculated everything and fallen to their knees next to their nemesis? God, the villain didn’t know.
But this was one of those times and honestly, the fact that the hero cried made the villain uneasy. They usually didn’t do that. They got back up or stayed down. Quiet. Suffering alone.
“This is insanity,” the hero wheezed. The villain stood there, scrutinising the mess. Assessing the situation wasn’t easy. They didn’t know how much damage they had done — they never did — but they knew the hero was okay. They were always okay. Always being just fine.
The question was: how do you kill such a saint?
“I’m afraid it is,” the villain whispered. “But I have to be honest. I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know when to stop.”
“And yet, you never pull through.” The villain kneeled beside the hero, listening carefully. “And neither do I.”
They studied their nemesis, studied the blood and the broken bones. A normal human being could never survive this.
The hero leaned their head against the wall and groaned. Blood was running out of their mouth.
“I will always have to stop you,” they said. “And I know you won’t stop. You won’t stop until you get what you want. God, I don’t even know what that is. Money? Chaos? Revenge?”
Purpose, actually. But the hero didn’t need to know that.
“Creation through destruction” the villain mumbled. They pushed a loose strand of hair out of the hero’s eyes. In another life, they could’ve been something different, they feared. “That’s what I want.”
The villain was a brilliant liar.
“Ouroboros,” the hero said. They looked at the villain and something incredibly tragic soaked through the air between them. “Tail devourer.”
“I’m no serpent.”
“We’re doomed, aren’t we? For as long as we’re alive, we are doomed.” Tears kept falling down their face and, hell, the villain couldn’t place that feeling in their chest at all. As if someone or something was squeezing their heart together until it popped.
“We can’t change this,” the villain whispered. They put a hand on the hero’s thigh, attempting softness when all they had ever touched had turned into dust. “But at the end of the day, I still have you. We may be doomed to fight each other, to attempt the other’s destruction but at least we do it together.”
They wiped tears and blood out of the hero’s face and stood up, looking around aimlessly.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Both healed overnight, like immortals do, and the circle repeated itself the next day.
However, it felt different this time. For both of them.
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