Why couldn't we make it work

Red

I was always told that love was a fool's game: I am no fool, and I do not play games.

Being the villain in everyone else's stories, love, was like a curse. I knew I wasn't evil, I wasn't bad, I wasn't wrong: I was tired, I was tired of people not listening, not caring. I had no-one by my side, no-one who could, even for a second, consider that I might not be that bad.

Then there was our hero, all he had to do was say a word and everybody loved him, everyone believed him, it wasn't fair.

Of course as villains and heroes do, our paths would cross. I wanted to hate him, for those words he said every time we met: 'why are you doing this'. It's like he thought I wanted to be the villain, like I wanted to be the bad guy, like I hadn't tried everything else. But as much as those words would anger me, the look in his eyes let me know that he was serious: he didn't know, but cared enough to ask.

The look in his eyes, his stunning sapphire eyes, let me know he didn't want to fight. And for a while that was enough. Under watchful eyes we would play our parts, roles given to us by everyone else, but hidden in the shadows it was ok. For the first time ever, I wasn't the bad guy, I wasn't some evil villain, I wasn't everything I had done, and I wasn't everything I used to be: I was me.

I suppose our faithful hero never stopped playing his role, because even in the shadows, he was my hero.

Time would pass and our friendship only grew to the point where we both wanted more. God, they said that love was a fool's game, but i didn't care, i could be a fool, i could play the game, as long as he stayed by my side.

It would get harder to keep up the act, to play the roles we never wanted. I think that was because we knew it wasn't an act. We were on different sides of a seemingly never ending war. All I wanted to do was give up, to let him win because I didn't care: I could lose as long as he was ok.

He did so much for everyone else, he deserved to be ok, and I knew that I would sacrifice the world to make him happy, to make him smile, to make him laugh, to make sure he was safe. I swear that was all I wanted.

I only had one thing left to do, if I was going to stop being everybody else's villain, there was no way I was going to let my self sacrificing idiot keep being forced to act as someone else's puppet. One last thing, a small explosion that would fix everything, that was all it was supposed to be.

But instead i watched him fly into the sky before the fateful explosion that meant i would never see my hero again

I should have known, the villain always loses.

I wish I never played the game, because as many battles as I had lost, losing him hurt so much more.

Of course he had to save them, I only wish he thought of what losing him would do to me, I don't care if that seems selfish, he never wanted to be the hero, and I needed him by my side.

I guess I truly was the bad guy.

That is the end of my story. I won the war I never wanted to fight, and I lost the game I swore I would never play. I guess life has a way of turning things upside down, and there was only one thing I was truly sure of, one fact, a secret I would take to my grave: I really was a fool but I wouldn't have had it any other way.