Everywhere I look, I get shamed because I’m the ‘villain’ but what if all I ever wanted to do was be the hero? Their hero? My hero…

Well, shame on them all!

I restrain a mean-looking child with a lolli in his grasp. “Is this what you want, huh?” I bark at the child’s parents - two mothers. One is frail and appears almost like glass as she breaks into sobs, wailing almost immediately at me to let him go and give him back. Whereas, the second mother - high spirited and way too overly confident and bossy. She’s pointing a black finger at me demanding for me to let her son go.

“No!” I command bitterly. “Once you bow down to me as your hero I will let him go,” I smiled wickedly and pulled a daisy from my pocket and handed it to the child. “Here take this.” I stroked the tips of my charcoal-like fingers over the soft layer of his silky blonde hair on the top of his scalp gently.

The child took the daisy while his parents shouted in distaste at him not to take it from an evil rotten witch like me. The child dropped it and shook his head from my fingers. “You little brat! I was being nice!”

I turned and suddenly a whole street was staring at me now yelling too. Pearl-shaped tear droplets rolled down my jaw as I whispered: “Am I not the good guy?”

Then a nostalgic voice sounded from behind my shoulder. “This isn’t the way, Journey!”

I turned around and spat out: “What would you know? You’re nothing like the good guy your just a little shit like all these other people Helena!?”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. But either way, I know for sure a hero would never hurt or harass people.” I stared at her blankly taking four seconds to process her words. “Let the child go,” she encouraged me. I glanced around me at the angry faces staring at me in the street and at the two mothers shouting and wailing at me, then at the child. More pearl-shaped tears rolled down my face. My face contorted with loss and an emotion I couldn’t place the name for. I took my grasp from the child. He ran to his parents and they hugged him probably more than they’d ever hugged him before.

“Come with me,” Helena offered her hand to me.

I blinked back the last of the tears now. “Why? What for? Why are you being nice to me?”

Helena shrugged. “Well, I dunno. But maybe I was in your position before so maybe I wanna help you become the good guy.”

I blinked, and a tear almost fell from my lids again. “You’d do that for me? After all the shitty things I've done. Even after just now?”

“I think everybody deserves a second chance. So will you come with me and allow me to teach you the ways of being the hero?”

I nodded. “Yes. Yes, I would.” I took Helena’s hand. And we began to walk together away from the crowd down the road when I gave Helena’s hand a squeeze. “By the way,” Helena stopped and turned to me as I spoke. I struggled to focus on Helena’s eye contact but continued anyways. “You’re my hero.”

Helena smiled. Glancing down at our grasped hands and back up into my eyes. “You’re my villain,” Helena smiled awkwardly now unsure what to do. Feeling the same way myself, I cupped Helena’s face with my other palm before sealing our lips together gently. When we broke away. Both of us villain and hero were flushing like cherries awkwardly. Then Helena took my hand and we walked to the end of the road together.

And there on that road, I learned something; Love is a weapon to be yielded up close or far away. But when you have it it's beautiful but also intoxicating. It can make or break entire colonies. But in this instance. Hero and villain became one of the same coin. And perhaps I found something or rather someone to live for too. So I suppose this whole hero thing is worth it in the end even if it's for a stupid word called love.

<3 💋💞