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chat-nyar · 2 months

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Can you write about a hero who was supposed to fight the villain but gets stunned when they see how beautiful the villain is (and maybe fall in love with them)?

It wasn't like the hero hadn't been warned, that was the worst thing. Everyone who had ever come across the villain was in love with them in some way - dazzled by the villain's beauty, drawn by a longing to earn the villain's admiration, possessed by a dark desire to have the villain as their own and only their own.

The hero had always known such a thing could never really happen. After all, everyone wanted the villain and no one had them. It had to be a trick, maybe some form of mind spell? The villain was powerful. They weren't something to be had. And beauty was such a surface thing - it spoke to nothing of the terrible acts the villain had proven themselves capable of. Of course, the hero would not be deceived by such things. They had trained all of their life. They knew what they were supposed to do.

Then they saw the villain, and the hero knew that they had been a fool.

The hero had been warned.

They had been warned, and seeing the villain standing in the threshold was still like seeing the sun for the first time, their face so lovely that it almost brought tears to the hero’s eyes. The hero felt their breath stutter in their throat. They felt their sword falter in their hand until the silver blade scraped carelessly against the floor. It felt like the solid surface beneath their feet had shattered.

If the villain was dead, then they would be gone from the world. The hero wouldn't be able to see that face again. The hero wouldn't be able to have them.

(As if the hero would ever have been able to have them, them, who they had heard stories about all of their life!)

The hero felt a distant ping, in the back of their brain, that maybe they should have blinded themselves before they ever looked up upon that face. They had been trained to fight in the dark. To fight with thick material bound over their eyes. The sightless mask rested on the bedside table of the inn, so close, but the hero couldn't quite bring themselves to reach for it. They felt stunned, as if from a reeling blow to the head.

Only a few seconds had passed.

"No." It came out raspy; a desperate plea. They had to stop looking.

They had been warned, but the villain wasn't supposed to have found them. It wasn't how the scene was supposed to play out. The villain was supposed to be in their fine blood-bought home, and the hero would stride in to challenge them there. It wasn't supposed to be in the cheapest inn in town, with mould on the walls, before the hero was ready. How had the villain known?

The villain stepped closer, head tilted to one side, as they shut the door to the room behind them with a click. They studied the hero, but the hero knew they wouldn't be able to get a good glance at their face while the hero's hood was still up, shrouding their features.

The hero kept staring.

Something in their chest tugged, gnawing at the tightly wound knots of duty and all of the hero's vows to protect. It felt impossible, after all, that someone so angelic could be so cruel. There had to have been a mistake, somewhere, right?

Another older instinct hissed at them to step back, look down, hide. To not be seen. To never be seen.

"Remember your lessons." The villain's voice was gentle and mocking and entirely impossible to deny. "Stay true to your heart. To your oaths."

The hero tried to remember how to swallow. How to breathe. Their mouth felt dry. They felt the enchanted sword fall from their grip with a clatter. They wondered if the villain would ask them to kneel, ask them to bear their throat to be cut. What an honour it would be, to have the villain do it personally.

No. No.

The hero squeezed their eyes shut, and the not looking almost hurt. Like amputating a limb. Like losing something vital.

The villain laughed quietly.

"Do you ever get lonely?" the hero asked.

The laughter stopped.

They heard, they felt, the villain stop too. They wondered, if they opened their eyes, if they would see surprise on the villain's face.

"Excuse me?"

"To have everyone want you, instantly. Because of your face. Want to serve you, so they might have you as their prize. Want to kill you, so maybe at least your death might be theirs alone."

The hero couldn't remember where they'd dropped their sword, they couldn't remember how to use it. It took all their efforts not to look. They felt starved. They felt hyperaware of everything the villain did; the sound of their breathing, the way there was only a few scant steps between them, the smell of them beneath the mediocre and previously not unpleasant odours of the inn.

The villain closed the final step between them, and the hero made an aborted sound as the villain swept their hood back, uncovering them.

For a moment, the only thing the hero could hear was their own panting breaths, the roar of their heart.

"Oh," the villain said.

Something about the hero revolted people. Strangers crossed the street, skittered away. Even the hero's teachers had felt it, and clamped against the urge to recoil only with the force of their own training. The hero was a little surprised that they hadn't heard or felt the villain leave already.

The hero jumped as they felt fingers close around their chin.

Their eyes snapped open again, and met the villain's gaze.

"Has anyone ever wanted you?" the villain asked.

It was the hero's turn to laugh, pained and shallow like they'd already had their windpipe slit.

The villain really was so very beautiful. They didn't feel like they belonged to the world around them. Looking at them was like realising how ugly the world was, how much it deserved to be ripped down and torn apart.

(No. No.)

"No," the villain said softly. "Of course they haven't."

The hero flinched. They scrambled, in the dull and familiar ache of it, for those hours upon years of training. The quiet hall. The isolation. They started to pull back, only for the villain's grip to tighten like a unexpected vice. The villain's fingers were soft. Like they had never held a sword until their palm was more callouses than skin, never scrubbed at themselves raw like that might get away whatever thing it was that made everyone react so strongly to them. The hero froze once more.

"Yes," the villain said, their touch a caress. "I get lonely. I suppose I don't need to ask if you do too."

The hero willed themselves to pull away, even as they willed for the villain to never let go again. They tried to remember the last time anyone had ever touched them. It must have happened. At least, when they were a child.

"God," the villain said, eyes wide. "You're exquisite."

"Don't-" They had known the villain to be awful, they had heard the mockery in their voice earlier even, but that...

The villain let go, as swiftly as they'd caught hold, and in the villain's gravitational orbit the hero swayed and stumbled. They caught the chipped edge of a bed post to keep from hitting their knees. The strange moment between them broke.

The hero still tracked the villain's movements around the small space instead, as if anything in that room mattered except them.

"You have been sent to kill me," the villain said, in a business-like tone.

"To fight you. They didn't - if capture is possible-" It felt suddenly, horrifically, airlessly wrong to imagine the villain in one of the cells. Caged. Trapped like a museum piece. The hero felt dizzy.

"Mm." The villain smiled, without warmth. "And do you think me beautiful?" There was something mocking to that question too, something with more teeth than faux gentleness. "Do you love me too?"

"Yes."

Love. Hate. Overwhelming and unstoppable as a tide. Incomprehensible. They had only just met.

"In love with the enemy," the villain sighed. "Tsk, tsk. How embarrassing for you."

They had only just met, but...

The hero stared at them. But.

The villain prowled across the room once more, and when they covered the hero's vision next, the movement was quick and violent. Their nails dug into the hero's temples like they might rake across like claws and scratch the hero's eyes out.

"You are repulsed by the thought," the hero managed, hands still useless at their sides. "And yet you do not run?"

"You are used to people running."

"As you are used to them kneeling at your feet."

"I am not repulsed by the thought of you," the villain said, after a very long moment. "I have heard stories about you too, you know, for so long. A masked hero who sends even the world's worst monsters fleeing in terror. Even the people you save all go pale in fear of you, as they do of me, even as they tell me blank-eyed how you saved them."

The hero flinched once more, but the villain would have none of it. They pressed closer with every fumbling step the hero backed away.

"Everyone warned me that you would come for me one day, if I grew too powerful, if I didn't let them protect me," the villain murmured. "But you are not so terrible a thing, are you? You are gorgeous."

"Don't-"

"-I think I'd rather like to have you, actually. Would you like to be had?"

The distant no in the hero's head felt very, very far away.

"As a weapon," the hero said, even as they knew they should say no and I am not a possession.

The villain laughed. "Oh, darling, no. What use do I have for weapons? I have me."

Well, that seemed true enough. One look, and an army would feel it's knees go wobbly beneath them. They would crumple.

"I can love something and still hurt it," the hero said. "Still kill it. Still do what I am meant to do."

It was another plea, of a different sort.

The villain's lips crushed against the hero's own; the first kiss they had ever had, sweet and claiming and the hero felt stunned all over again.

"So can I," the villain whispered. "Now, come."

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