I Am (Not) Your Hero

16

Starlette hobbled toward Smite, looking up at him. He was balled up in the corner, his arm over his head, wrapped around his stomach. He looked up at her.

"What?" He whispered. "Come to gloat? I've exposed myself you were right. I was wrong."

She knelt down in front of him, pushing a hair away from his face. He looked away. "Of course I was."

He looked up at her. "What?"

"Of course I was right. I mean...I'm human, Smite. I'm human and you're...nothing."

His eyes widened.

"You're not human you're not alien you're just...a misshapen...thing that should've never come to be. It's why you're in such agony," she cupped his face. "I understand that now."

He looked down at his hands. Misshapen? Nothing. Is that what this emptiness amounted to? Is that the reason? He wanted to defend his existence but he found no reply. There was no defense. He had never been something that was meant to exist.

"You're an anomaly, Smite. You're a mutant. A freak. And you know that. It's why you lash out. It's also why you save people. To prove that you're something...you can never be. Heroism, goodness those qualities humans have. And...you're not human, are you?"

The air between them have shifted. She cocked her head and waited for violence.

"No. No, I don't think I am," he murmured, his voice shaking with uncertainty.

And with that admittance, Starlette kissed him. His brows raised at the sudden feeling of her soft lips against his. She'd never initiated any kind of contact with him.

Starlette was a martial artist. She was adept at finding a weak point, and beating it until it gave way. Over and over and over again.

Until the bone cracked under her hands, until blood gushed and painted her fingers, until her suit was full of blood and pain and tears from clawing fingers desperate for the pain to cease.

"No...you're not, Smite. But I am. I'm your guide now. I forgive you, for hurting me. You're an animal. Creatures can't help it but I'm here now, in a real way," she whispered, stroking his hair.

He collapsed into her, a dying star imploding. The creature of such violence, of such power was now weak and crumbling—faster than she thought possible.

"I'm gonna help you, Smite."

"Please," he wrapped his arms around her. "I want to be..."

She hugged him back. He didn't know what he wanted to be, she knew that. But she also knew whatever that was, whatever it is he wanted to be? He couldn't. He could never be it, and it would crush him when he found out, but it wouldn't be today.

By the time he found out he could never be what he was hoping for she've been long gone, escaping the dying star before it become the black hole it was destined to be, sucking everything and everyone into its dark pool of destruction.

Of emptiness.

And that was why she was sure he would never become anything more than he was. Because he was empty. And you just couldn't make something from nothing.

Smite smiled and nuzzled his nose with his. "So you want me to let you go? That's what this is all about isn't it? I'm not stupid, Starlette."

She stood, walking away. "Fine then. I want to leave. What now?"

He emerged from his weakness, his hands already twitching with violence.

"Oh..." she edged back carefully toward the door. "You wanna hurt me so bad don't you?"

He cocked his head. "Why do you make me do things I don't like, Starlette."

"Oh no...it's not me. It's you. It's always been you. It's just the debase kind of thing you are, Smite."

"Stop calling me that," he spat.

"What?" She edged further back, the space between them being eaten up by his steps forward. "A thing?"

"Smite."

Starlette scoffed. "It's your name isn't it?"

He spat at her feet. She chuckled in sheer disbelief. "You are unbelievable —"

"—you do this to me! You make me like this!" He shouted, closing the distance between them, slamming his hand into the wall next to her head. It gave away under her palm.

Her face was even.

"You make me...want to hurt you. Only you. Everyone else I feel indifference, but you! You!" he swore. "I can't help but hate you, because I care about you, Star."

"Oh, spare me the abuser go to, please. I've heard it all before," she yawned. He slammed his hand against the wall again, revealing the stud, his teeth clenched, his face wrenched as if he were about to cry.

"You're gonna bring this house down," she mused in the face of his frustration. "That is not care—"

"Maybe it's my care, huh? Since I'm a thing—since I'm not real like you! Maybe that's how my affection shows. Maybe I love you?"

She rolled her eyes. "You cannot conceptualize love and I am beginning to doubt if you were even capable of it."

His eyes widened. "That is a fucked thing to say."

She looked down at her leg. He followed her gaze before looking back at her.

"You know I'd break them both irreparably if you tried to leave me. I would put you in a wheel chair, star, no more backflips no more pissing on your own I am capable of deeply, deeply cruel things."

"I know. That much I know. You can be cruel. You just can't be kind." She smiled.

He scoffed. "You don't think I'll kill you?"

She smiled widely and giggled. He reared back at the shock of it, the innocence the lilt of her laughter like flowers blooming, but why the fuck was she laughing? He wanted to force her to do again.

"You think I care?"

He reared back once more turning his back on her, flexing it unconsciously. "I want you to care. I don't want you to die."

"You just want to keep hurting me? Keep hurting me right up until that second where I can't take anymore and pull back? Because that's living? Does that sound like life to you?"

She looked away, at the knife on the countertop that did no good to her, not against him. It couldn't hurt his flesh. She could maybe harm his self esteem with her death but it wasn't worth it. He thought he loved her—he didn't know her.

"I don't know," he murmured, stumbling away as if drunk. "I don't know what this is, I don't know I am, why do I like you? Why do I wanna hurt you so bad?" The sentence was almost a plea, a broken whimper.

"You make me this way. Look at me. Look at me!" He shouted, his eyes lazering the wall next to her. She just crossed her arms.

"Just tell me. Tell me what this is," he begged. "Tell me—"

"You are wildly insecure. And you care what I think. And I don't think highly of you and it's because of you and you want to hurt me because of it."

He sat down, his back against the wall, internalizing her words, mouthing them back to himself silently.  "I want to be better. I want to be...I want to be the man they think I am. But I just...don't know how, Star. I don't."

He shook his head with a chuckle. "You know a few months ago, I was fine and everyone in world loved me and it was somewhat hollow but so am I so it filled me in a way. Like soda before dinner."

She crossed the room, sitting next to him.

"And then you turned it all upside down. And now who I am is not enough. I've been many things but I have been enough."