A Hero's Love #2 (Patreon)

Part 1 

Hollow’s home looked like a show-room. There was no dust, and no dishes piled up by the sink that he hadn’t got around to doing yet. The only real signs of personality that she could immediately see, that wasn’t tucked behind another closed door, was the insane collection of DVDs that made up the entirety of one wall.

“Your home is nice,” Malefica said.

“My home is not a threat to me, should someone manage to break in,” Hollow replied, which seemed a sad way to approach an inner sanctum.

Then again, maybe Malefica wasn’t surprised. The thought of Magnificent picking about her own home, with her things and intimacies and private dreams strewn about everywhere, made her shudder. That wasn’t even getting into dna or the bits of her that someone cruel and opportunistic could take advantage of.

“And you’re sure he’s not going to break in here looking for me?”

The look on Mr Magnificent’s face when they had left together had been enough to send a genuine chill down her spine.

His delusions, the fact that he thought she would love him back because he was the hero and such was the natural order of the world, were terrifying. But the thought of what he might do when the fantasy was broken was even worse.

“I doubt it.” Hollow set his bag down, his every movement meticulous and controlled, and she caught herself wondering he was always like that. Precise. Everything just so. Or, instead, if he was simply uncomfortable to have a familiar stranger in his home. What then, if that were true, did it mean that he had invited her to stay with him anyway? He clearly lived on guard.

“Because you’re powerful and it’s not worth the fight.”

“Because he’s worried I’d slit your throat if pushed. Didn’t you know,” Hollow glanced up at her, eyes dark and unreadable. “I’m heartless. You’re an excellent piece of leverage. Who knows what I’d do out of spite to keep him from having you.”

It struck her that maybe she’d made a mistake, but maybe…

“That’s not why you invited me here..” She remembered the expression on his face, the falter in his voice, too clearly. She didn’t think Hollow was the type to show weakness on purpose, even if it was a feint or a falsity.

“No. But it’s what he thinks.”

She snorted, and stood near the doorway, not entirely certain what to do with herself.

Hollow sat down on the sofa, reaching for the TV remote. “Your room is the one on the right, bathroom is next to you at the very end. Make yourself at home. Don’t go into my study. It’s the locked one.”

It felt odd to imagine Hollow doing anything as normal as watching a TV, showering or sleeping. She’d seen him eat and drink before, of course – those markers of humanity – but it was still odd. He was Hollow.

“You said you knew what a hero’s love was like.”

“Yes.”

He didn’t elaborate, which she supposed was fair enough given they weren’t exactly buddies and he didn’t owe her anything. She was already in his debt, if she wanted to think about it too closely. Still.

“Are you free now?”

By which she meant:

· how did you do that

· teach me

· I want to be free

· Thank you

· I hope you’re okay

· I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry

He paused, even as the news appeared on the TV. He looked at it like he wasn’t seeing it. Then, he looked back over to her, and it was true what so many people said about him. His eyes were empty, blank, missing something vital that one might expect.

Yet, she had seen him earlier. She wondered how many other people in the world had ever heard him so passionate, so entirely not hollow.

“It was different for me,” he said. “Then with your circumstances.”

“Because you’re powerful.” She didn’t mean to dismiss what he had gone through in the slightest. But she also couldn’t imagine a scenario where a hero was more powerful than he was because Hollow…well, Hollow was a cataclysm wrapped in the body of a young man.

“Because,” he said, nothing in his voice, “for a while at least I loved my hero back. Or, at least, I thought I did.”

That she most certainly hadn’t expected. She blinked. She couldn’t imagine Hollow in love.

He looked away, his jaw gaining that edge of tightness again. For a moment she thought that might be it; she’d be dismissed out of his living room into the safe haven of her assigned room, or kicked out if she’d managed to enrage him enough with her questions perhaps.

“They taught me to love a prison,” Hollow said, just as she thought he might not speak again. “To think it was all that I deserved. That I was too dangerous to be free, so a kind cage was the best I could hope for, and they could give me that. They would give me that because they loved me.”  There was something savage in Hollow’s tone that she found oddly comforting. “And for a while, for a while I tried. I tried to be someone else. Something else. I believed them.”

It wasn’t, quite, an answer to the question she had asked.

“Magnificent is a piece of work,” he said, the edge gone from his voice. “It is good that you have not fallen for his charms.”

“He has charms?”

“All heroes do. It’s in their modus operandi.”

She supposed, if she’d been other than what she was, that maybe she could have been charmed by Magnificent. He knew the right beats for courtesy, he was handsome, he was smart and he had that dazzling career of heroism going for him.

But she was a villain, and villains always knew the truth of heroes and the fact that what you were called wasn’t what you were. The dazzle, soon enough, was gone. She could see him clear.

“I take it you could killed your hero,” she said, sort of wishing she could do the same with her own. It would solve the problem, wouldn’t it? She would be able to move around without him lurking on every corner, without feeling his eyes on her even when she couldn’t see him.

She allowed herself, finally, to take her shoes off. To begin settling into Hollow’s home.

“Oh, no. After what they did?”

She looked at him, halfway to hanging her coat up.

Hollow’s smile was ghastly. “My hero is in the study.”

“T-the-“ It came out a stutter, cold in the pit of her stomach.

Hollow’s power was such that he could…well, hollow someone out. Suck away feeling and hope and all the things that made a person a person until all that was left was the empty shell.

Normally, he didn’t go quite so far. He’d temporarily take their bravery, or their intelligence, to get what he wanted but essentially leave his enemies be. But everyone knew what he could do. What he was willing to do, if suitably motivated.

Her mind flashed to a figure standing stock still in the study, vacant, more statue than anything else. Tarnished gold. A reminder of - what?

The hero, whoever they were, would not be feeling their hero’s love any time soon.

There was a reason, she reminded herself, that Hollow had the reputation he did. There was a reason that she was a small fish in a big pond, and he was not, and that reason was power but not only that. Never only that. He may have had his moments of kindness but he was not a good person.

“We all have our origin stories, though your one is unfortunately immune to that as well,” Hollow said, the smile fading. “Otherwise I’d have sucked his poisonous feelings for you out a long time ago.”

Malefica swallowed.

Then again, she wasn’t a good person either. Because if she could get Magnificent off her back, if she’d know for certain that he would never bother her again? Always know where he was like a spider on the bathroom wall? Well. She’d prefer his death. Simple. Clean cut. A mercy, in its way. But she wasn’t the super villain. She’d take whatever set her free. Maybe that was what a villain was.

“Goodnight, Malefica,” he said, softly, watching her.

She should have been terrified. The terror didn’t come; not of him, not even then and with the new small pieces that she had. Maybe, perhaps, because he might take her life but she knew he would never take her. He would never ask for everything that she was, changed, and call that love.

“Maria,” she said. “My name is Maria.”

He didn’t offer his name, but he inclined his head in acknowledgment of hers.

And, for the first time in a long while, in the shadow of a kind and terrible monster, she slept peacefully.