Villains in Training

Chapter Ten: The Origins of Belladonna Marimoor

By night, Dawn Marimoor was the villain Midnight.  By day, she was a middle school English Teacher.  Teaching was her passion, but it didn't pay very well.  Benefits were good, but the pay didn't match the cost of living no matter where she went, so she used the superpowers she was born with to give back to teachers what the government would not.

It was villainous and heroic at the same time, a Robin Hood type.  She called herself a vigilante villain, but even that name didn't quite fit, and besides, everyone else simply called her a villain.

Dawn's morals were already in a grey area, so becoming a villain wasn't a huge step.  However, it did slowly take over her life.  At first, she used her powers of sight- the ability to see everything in the present and the very near future at any given moment and to see the distant future when asleep- to perfectly time heists.  She slowly began losing focus and stealing more and more while giving the same amount back to teachers, but she was quite happy where she was...

Until she met Colin Freeland.  He was a journalist who'd gotten a little too close for comfort and she was ready and willing to remove the problem, but then she saw his face up close.  Bright red hair, brown eyes, and the look of someone who is much too good for this world.  She'd seen him before and, like some unfortunate children's movie, she'd seen him in her dreams.

Those dreams, Dawn remembered, were not dreams of possible futures, but of the future.  They were never altered no matter what her decisions or actions.  She imagined if she tried to kill him, he'd survive and her dream of wasting time watching movies while lying down on the couch and eating various unhealthy snacks would still happen.

So she asked him out as Dawn.

Then he asked her out.  Then she asked him, then he asked her and the cycle continued until they'd gone out twice a week for 52 weeks and it was his turn to ask her out once more, except this time he did it with a key and Dawn was more than happy to move in with him.

By then, Dawn wasn't angry with anything- not with how teachers were treated nor how the government was run.  Any bit of villain left in her had been washed out and she couldn't help but think about how someone once told her that evil could be cured with love.  It was certainly loving Colin that had changed her tune toward being a villain.

They were happy, existing only in the honeymoon phase, for three years before Dawn found out she was pregnant.  They were almost as happy as they'd been when they first started going out.  Almost.

Then, Dawn had a dream.

Her dream, vivid as it always was when it was her powers that caused it, was of a seemingly near future, which already put her on edge.  She seemed to be in pain, her stomach cramping as if she were going into labor, but she knew she was still in the first trimester.  She kept telling Colin that she was fine, but by the third day, he insisted they go to the hospital, so he drove them.  That's when everything went wrong.

The car was practically pushed off the road by another crazy driver and Dawn was sure it was her own death that this dream was foretelling, but she survived.  She was bleeding, barely breathing, but she was alive.  That was more than she could say for Colin.  She hoped that at least the baby would be Ok, but the doctor gave her news that it hadn't survived.

Then Dawn woke up.

She hadn't realized she was crying until she'd finally gotten out of her own head enough to hear Colin comforting her, telling her it would be Ok.

They talked through the dream that night.  It was 2:30 in the morning, but they talked.  Dawn told Colin everything, every detail until he came up with an idea.  "If you have any pains, we'll go to the hospital immediately.  We won't wait, we'll simply go.  Then there will be no driver to run us off the road," he said, but Dawn was unconsolable, knowing that there was no changing the future.