I Do
TW: Blood, bruises, and some angst
Ya girl has some off-days from college, and she's decided to use em. Missed y'all < 3
The villain's gloved fingers drummed impatiently on the table, his dark shadow looming over the hero with a promise of danger.
"What's it going to be, Hero? I sell those codes to Supervillain? Or you comply with our little agreement?" His tone was perfectly calm, eerily so, his eyes impossible to read behind the domino mask, but he still emanated danger, his lips drawn together in a tight line.
It was cruel calling it 'their' agreement because the hero had no hand in this. The suggestion had left her more shocked than angry, still reeling from the villain's words.
"Marry me," he'd said in a commanding tone. Like any other choice would've been the wrong answer, tilting her chin upwards ever so subtly.
And the hero held his gaze, transfixed, gasping and laughing and hoping this was nothing but a fever dream.
"Wha-" the hero choked out incoherently.
The villain had let go of her face, his hands resting on the top of her chair. "I can repeat it as many times as you want me to," he stage-whispered against the shell of her ear, his tone gentle and dangerous all at once.
"But, I don't understand. What could you possibly gain from this of all things? You despise me, Villain." She truly couldn't process any of what she was told, the mere idea of being tethered so bindingly to her worst enemy leaving her mind an ineffective, nervous wreck.
The villain huffed out a rough laugh, very genuine and horribly cruel. "Oh, but I do despise you. Very much. I despise how defeated and humiliated you left me in front of half the city . Despised the fact that you got me locked up. Despised how for the very first time, I actually felt like I lost the game, and I'm a rather sore loser, you know." The villain's demeanour was eerily calm, his shoulders straight, his resting face showing nothing but a placid neutrality as he turned to stand in front of the hero, but it was arguably more terrifying, more unpredictable.
"I just want to see you as defeated as I've been, Hero. Bound so intimately to your worst enemy, your greatest nightmare. If you do this, it means admitting to me, and more importantly, to yourself, that the only option you have is bending to my whims," he crooned, his lips curling into a wicked smirk.
The hero wanted to scream, to kick the villain in the teeth and watch the blood trickle down his lips and the bruising dye his skin a grotesque purple. She wanted to think of a clever solution that left the man's face contorted with a strange mix of hatred and respect, to blow his plan up in his face. Anything that would spare her this hell.
"Did I mention you have exactly five minutes to decide?" he piped up casually, examining his nails.
The hero swore and the villain let out a half-snicker. This was madness. A death sentence that would last for the rest of her life. And it didn't matter if she said no, if she undid whatever she could of the havoc those codes would wreak in Supervillain's hands. The conviction so heavily saturated in the villain's tone, the way his jaw clenched and his fists tightened was more than enough proof that he would spread more chaos, spark more fights, destroy an endless array of things and lives until she gave in to him.
The villain loved control like he loved the air he breathed, even more so, like a drug that left him intoxicated and lusting for more.
If she didn't listen, she was sending everyone she cared about, sending the city, the whole world if the villain had it his way, to hell.
The hero sucked in a measured breath, reading the contract word for word, from the title to the fine print, scouring it for a loophole she could use, for any more tricks up the villain's sleeve, just to find nothing. She tried to relax her tensed shoulders, her grip merciless on the pen in her erratically shaking hands, every curve and line of the letters of her name feeling like a blade was slicing through her heartstrings like how one would rip a stalk; slowly, unevenly, time seeming to slow down and the world seeming to freeze for a moment that felt like a thousand years and then some.
The villain didn't smile or laugh or let any display of emotion etch itself onto the harsh lines of his features. He nodded curtly instead, snatching the paper and folding it into a square and tucking it in a well-concealed pocket of his suit. "The cruelty only ends here," he attested, his voice tight and no longer playful, the way it was whenever he promised something.
The hero nodded, swallowing the humiliation at the back of her throat, even though she wasn't inclined to believe him.
"There's a ceremony. Nothing very insane, just you, me and an officiator. This is just a contract, not a marriage certificate, even if we both know which one of those is more binding. You'll show up today, if you know what's good for you, heroine."
The hero wasn't sure when she was up on her feet and slapping the villain harshly across the face, blood spurting from his mouth and staining his perfectly straight teeth, as he only grit them into a manic grin, shaking with a hoarse cackle as he wiped the blood of his face "Is that how you treat your husband, my dear? Do they forget to teach you manners at the hero agency?"
The hero was too dazed with rage to speak, trying to mar the villain's visage with another rough blow to it, until he caught her hand with an iron fist. "I said I'd never hurt you for nothing, but not that I'd let you do to me what you please without consequence. So play nice, darling." The villain let go of her arm slowly, the bruises he left in his wake more than enough of a warning.
The second he left, the hero didn't cry as she thought she would, she didn't scream, she didn't destroy everything around her or rip through her hair. Instead, she slid down against the wall, expressionless but breathing hard, her lungs hungry for air that seemed so unfairly little, her heart playing songs of anxiety and fury and sorrow every horrible emotion she'd ever known.
She was marrying the villain. Marrying the villain, and she couldn't do a thing about it. Marrying him and no one would come to save her.
Sometimes being a hero means saving the whole world except yourself.
✨️Timeskip✨️
Sure enough, the villain was there in a tailored suit, in front of his house her new prison, where he'd told her to show up, the officiator standing with a solemn expression on his face.
The villain wasn't supposed to be handsome, the dark brown hair she was normally used to seeing messy and caked with blood slightly damp with gel and mostly hanging in loose, luscious waves, his eyes a dazzling green-blue, long, dark lashes framing them in a way that put the best kinds of kohl to shame and his cheekbones sharp and high-set, the split on his lip hardly distracting from the rest of his appearance. It was so unbelievably stupid, so inconsequential, and yet the hero hated him even more for his tantalisingly beautiful features, for the way his grin would've fooled her into thinking he truly was in love, if she didn't notice how it didn't reach up to his eyes.
The hero hadn't paid any mind to whatever the officiator had said until it was her turn to say 'I do', flashing the villain a terribly fake smile that wasn't half as charming as his, but it would have to do as she slid a simple platinum ring on his finger, and he slid a diamond ring onto hers.
"Let's go," the villain said when they were finally done, gently taking the hero's gloved hand in his and leading her up the stairs and into the mansion.
The heroine was not one to admit defeat and snap in half in the fashion that a twig would. Many a battle would need to be lost for a victory in the war, many a sacrifice would have to be made for a greater reward. She would take the pain like stone would take a blunt pickaxe, just to twist a knife in the villain's chest when he least expected. Because history forgets everyone but those who laugh the last.
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i don't know why i'm thinking about crimson peak again, but i am, so here you go. some semi-coherent musings:
i've seen a lot of people react negatively to thomas and edith's confrontation in the climax (you tried to kill me / i did / you said you loved me / i do) because they see it as an attempt to "redeem" thomas, and they don't think it succeeds at that. but honestly i've never interpreted it that way?
what i've always taken away from it is more like... thomas just doesn't see the love and the violence as inherently contradictory. like, i'm not saying he currently wants to kill her, but he doesn't seem to see the gravity of the fact that he did. he was raised on violence. all his major interactions with the world have involved someone hurting him (parents; almost certainly boarding school), or him hurting someone else (wives). the only loving relationship he ever had before edith was with lucille, and that's deeply unhealthy on both sides... to the point that when he has this exchange, he's minutes away from being murdered by lucille.
lucille has her own speech about violence and love which frames the two as fundamentally intertwined, and her violence as coming from love, which is both tragic and horrifying in its own way. but i feel like thomas' thing isn't even... that. it's just like... stark coexistence. as an onlooker you naturally want to reconcile these two parts of him somehow, to fold the love into the violence or the violence into the love, but you can't. they're just both true at once. i can't quite put into words why, but i want to call it eerie.
(and i think this is part of the point of thomas disparaging edith's writing, too: he calls it sentimental and simplistic because it's not how he works. he's not just a villain, and he's not just a tragedy. he's both, and he remains both throughout the story. there isn't any comfortable conclusion to him. maybe he wasn't unsaveable, but he also wasn't saved.)
so. as i see it, it's not "he tried to kill her, but he loves her." it's: "he tried to kill her, and he loves her."
like, yes, of course, you're right, thomas' love of edith doesn't make the violence less real. but. it is also true that thomas' violence towards edith doesn't make the love less real. does that unsettle you? good.
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As the weird mythology-obsessed kid growing up, I have countless times been disappointed by how little most people know about mythology, even in spaces where I thought people SHOULD know a bit more than the basics. (Namely, college level writing classes. Not just the students, but the teachers. At a top 20 liberal arts college. Literally just. Actual literature professors of mine not knowing relatively known stories like that Aphrodite cheated on Hephaestus with Ares. Reader, I was gobsmacked.)
The fact is, at least in the US, your average person on the street, NOT ON TUMBLR, but I mean like actually outside this bubble, doesn’t know much mythology. They might know Zeus, or Hercules, or “Mighty Aphrodite” based on recent TV shows or the Disney movies or the aforementioned song.
I’m reminded of this XKCD comic which really nails it:
This also applies to mythology. More people than you, the reader of this, probably don’t know who Orpheus and Eurydice are than you might think. Hadestown returned those names to the sort of mainstream and even THAT niche of musical theater is still, well, pretty damn niche.
Thor 3 has Zeus in it, and Hercules, and obviously Thor. But the Thor franchise is wildly inaccurate to actual Norse mythology is probably the biggest influx of mainstream knowledge of mythology where you MIGHT be able to talk to the average person about who, say, Loki is. But it’s doubtful they’d know a single historically accurate myth, unless MAYBE they’d also played God of War. But again, these are still very nerdy niches within the general mainstream culture.
I dunno. Maybe there’s no point to this. Just that sometimes I see people on here, especially in the Sandman fandom, kind of surprised by mythological knowledge not being more widespread. But in my personal experience, even in very nerdy circles, it very often really, REALLY isn’t.
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