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Hero
By Kaia M. Harker

The first time he tried to kill himself, he was nine. After losing his temper for the third time that week, and beating the shit out of some child who had the unfortunate luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He figured he could eventually swing high enough to reach the necessary velocity needed for him to simply jump off and fall to his death right there under the monkey bars. It wasn’t very successful. He ended up with scraped knees and elbows, and a pronounced fear of heights that haunted him well into his adult years.

The second time, he was twelve. After his father told him that he would be happier elsewhere, in a little country across the Black Sea called Melican. He and his sister stole a lighter from the pantry, and he proceeded to command his sister to set him on fire. The younger child went crying off to their father. After that, he lost interest in his younger sibling entirely, and the lighter episode was incidentally known as the last time the two of them ever played together.

The closest he ever came to succeeding was when he was seventeen, after everything had gone wrong. The thought of death by amphetamines or liquor seemed a much more pleasant alternative to death by fire or death by swing.

He was in and out of rehab for the remaining years of his teenage youth, and soon after he found himself drafted into the Melican regular militia. It was ultimately a pointless and completely non-life-altering experience, but it did give him a lot of time to write. And by the time he was clean and had so valiantly served his country, he had finished the manuscript for his first novel.

Writing had been his salvation. His talent, his outlet, his whatever the fuck they liked to call it. Artistic expression. All he knew was that it made him feel better. None of his writings were purely works of fiction. And certainly not romantic fiction, the shit genre in which he allegedly claimed his fame. They were the autobiographical monologues of his inner demon, and the only way to shut him up was to drown him out with the obnoxious clacking of fingernails scratching across rough parchment. He developed the fixation at a very young age, and clung to it instead of toy swords and cheap parlor magick. They had predicted early on that he was an odd child, and would probably grow up to become an odd man. He hated it when other people pointed out truths about him, and after twenty years of listening to people point out the truths about his faults and his failures, he finally stopped going to therapy altogether. It made him realize that not only had he wasted half his life savings on shitty advice, he also managed to become needlessly dependant on prescription narcotics. Having lost his dealer, he was going through the first bouts of nausea, cold sweat, late night vomiting and the general ugliness that was cold turkey. He never imagined there’d be a day when the first thought that came to mind upon waking up would be ‘goddamn I could really use some Vicodin with my coffee.’

Addicted, alone, middle-aged, and just a little bit suicidal. The curse of the artistic soul and the destiny of one who chose to write and be resentful for a living.

It was a challenge and a thrill, writing. A cathartic ritual that desensitized through over exposure. It forced him to confront all the things that made him want to sleep with the lights on at night. It gave form to his phobias and structure to his fears. A private haunted house paved with letters, framed with syllables, and furnished with evocative metaphors. Great writers wrote to wield the emotions of others. He wrote to control his own. So he would never have to be scared again. Truly scared. Cornered in a dark, piss and mold smelling room scared. Held down by putrid meaty hands while the god of his universe watched on with a smile scared. Rape scared. Inside his office, his little pet shop of horrors, he would dissect and analyze and work back until even he realized the irony of it all. He was his own sickness and his own cure. A self-healing and self-destructive mode of being from which he could neither escape nor demolish. To let himself forget would mean not to write. And what would Vigil Asclades be if he did not write?

So he wrote himself into the same pitiful characters in the same pitiful situations again and again. The opposite of déjà vu – jamais vu. The same people, the same encounters, the same stories over and over, just packaged in a different leather bound volume, and somehow it all becomes brand new. That’s how the best memoirs are written. That’s also what happens to old people trapped in Alzheimer loops who meet their husbands and wives and sons and daughters for the first time every month.

He finally cracked a while back. Nobody saw it coming, except for him. He had read about it in some nameless volume on Pyschology that Azeroth had made good on collecting and always had suspicions that it would happen to him. He hit a dry spell that lasted nearly two years, during which time not a single word was written. His career in both militia and Guild recruit continued as always, but his latest half-finished jamais vu was dropped. When it was over, he was unable to churn out anything save for some scriblings in handwriting that he couldn't even recognize as his own. They said he had a mental breakdown. But he knew what it really was. It was the beginning of the fucking end. Writing simply couldn’t save him anymore.

Afterwards, he became even more of a hopelessly angry person. All he had was the boiling inside of him, day in and day out. Until everything boiled dry and the only thing left was the hate. Hate for people, hate for life, hate for all the things that should have happened for him, but didn’t. But most of all, hate for her. Hate for her empty vows and broken promises and how she had moved on years ago, yet he himself was still stuck here, right here, where he had always been. Like the old people. Like his more bitter than sweet blurbs. Stuck. Yesterday, today, and all of the tomorrows to come.

What he really hated, was himself.

He tried to kill himself for the fourth time two days ago, on his birthday. He went to the bakery and bought a single slice of cake and for god knows why, a candle. He dumped the colorful cut of pastry onto a plate, stuck the candle in it, shut off all the lights in his apartment and read the birthday greetings that had been slipped in with his mail. All three of them. As he watched the tiny flame dance and flicker, he decided that thirty-five years was long enough. He paid his dues. Besides, he knew he had hit the bottom when he found himself celebrating his own birthday. It was a personal memo written to him from above. The memo said: give up, you sad sack of shit.

He went into the bathroom, flung open the medicine cabinet and emptied every bottle he had into the sink, until the basin was filled with pills and capsules all colors of the rainbow. He reached in and grabbed a hefty handful. And then he stood there, one hand gripping the edge of the counter, the other out in front of him, a determined fistful of chalky pharmaceutical deliverance. He stared down at his closed fist. Do it. He swallowed once, and stared harder. Do it. He could feel the tiny beads of sweat starting to gather at the junction of his brows. Do it. Put it in your mouth. Do it. Do it.

He cursed, and let the tablets sift through his fingers.

He couldn’t do it.

Too weak to live, and too scared to die. He could see the great artistic geniuses laughing down at him. Hemingway was shaking his head. “You pussy, you fucking pussy.” he said. “I blew my head off and you can’t even swallow a couple of goddamn pills.” More laughing. “And to think you’ve tried your whole life to become a hero...”

Hero. The quintessence of masculinity. A man who cannot be stopped. He does not wilt, he does not gripe, and he does not ever compromise.

A Hero endured with resistance and dignity. A Hero bore through the hardships of a world that was chaotic, perilous, and painful.

He knew he shouldn’t have gotten that stupid candle. Fire, throughout history, had always made man feel invincible enough to attempt the impossible. Pills. What the hell was he thinking? He went to bed that night stomach full of beer and cake, and fell asleep wondering whether or not it was hard to get a gun in this neighborhood.

A Hero must act acceptably in the face of death.

Another eventless week came and went. Another night of driving around the same dimly lit streets, ripping through gears and barreling through stop signs. The concept of a weekend holds no real meaning anymore when you’re unemployed. Every day’s a fucking holiday. Another chance to get drunk and accumulate more outstanding tickets. He shifted up to fourth, the car gaining air as it charged off and crashed down along the rise and dips in the asphalt. He weaved blindly through the backstreets between sleazy love motels and dirty pachinko arcades, just waiting for the night’s first cowboy cop to come at him from around the corner, lights going sirens blaring. And he would gladly report, yes officer, I knew exactly how fast I was going, because you see the only thing that makes me feel alive nowadays is doing one hundred in a thirty-five.

A Hero lived by his own ideals of honor and justice.

Across the railway tracks, under the overpass. The world flew past in a murky haze of neon. The road signs blurred into one another, the buildings spilled backwards in the rearview mirror. The speed was as anesthetic as it was energizing, and sometimes it could almost make him forget where he was in a city that he was able to navigate through with his eyes shut. In the windshield, the words ‘happy hour’ shone at him in a glowing seductive red. The sign stood in front of a pub he had no recollection of ever seeing. He watched the bar and the sign slip past him. Then, abruptly, before entering the next intersection, he downshifted and turned sharply across four lanes. He pulled into the front lot.

He shut off the engine, and waited for the adrenaline high to recede. When he felt his heart rate slow down to a reasonable pace, he straightened his collar, left the car, and walked across the parking lot towards the muted hum of music and the line of purple light seeping through the cracked front door.

The pub was unexpectedly quaint inside. Its location was far enough removed from downtown to remain relatively un-crowded on a Friday night. Scattered beneath the dim lighting were pockets of insipid looking patrons hunched over small tables. Three men sat at the bar nursing bottles of beer. On the lounge sofa, a couple was heatedly engaged in a messy swapping of tongues and groping hands. A pianist sat at the piano churning out a soft blues backdrop.

He situated himself at the furthest end of the bar, against the wall. When the bar tender asked for his drink he pulled out all of the cash from his wallet, slid the bills across the counter, and told the bar tender to surprise him.

A Hero should drink excessively, but not sloppily.

A minute later the bar tender sat a glass down in front of him; its contents looked to have the consistency of vaseline. Fortunately the taste did not reflect its appearance. He sipped the drink and eyed the moaning drunks on the sofa, grinding to the rhythm of the music. “Oh yes,” the girl whispered, “yes, just like that.” The soothing piano notes slid between each other, smooth and silky, like buttered cream. He took another sip from his glass. Then, the pianist adjusted the microphone, and started to sing.

He looked up. Away from his drink, and away from the bar.

The rest of the pub disappeared. Everything disappeared, until there was only him, and that voice. The voice that shadowed behind his every footstep. The voice that lurked in the hallways of his empty apartment. The voice that sang to him every day, keeping him from writing, from sleep, from thought, from sanity. He rose to his feet, and took a step forward. Two steps. That voice.

There was no mistaking that voice.

He took another step. Then another. And before he knew it, he was standing in front of the piano. The pianist had her head down, and her eyes closed. He clenched his hands to stop them from shaking. A Hero must always possess grace under pressure. He opened his mouth.

“What’s a big shot like you doing at a bar like this?”

Maeve Harker lifted her head.

Those eyes were still the same ones he saw every night in his dreams. The singing stopped. Fingers froze stiffly in place, poised mid-play on the black and white keys. The silence echoed loudly against the walls. “Oh god,” the girl on the couch moaned, “Oh god, yes.”

Infinity passed in a second.

“…A friend called in a favor. I generally don’t do this type of thing anymore.” She looked down, and began hastily shuffling her music sheets into a pile, “I’m not a musician anymore.”

“Really. Still spend all of your time slinking around back alleys and preying on the weak?”

She shut the top of the piano and stood. “It’s good to see you again. Take care.” She picked up her case, stuffed the sheets inside, then turned swiftly and walked off the stage.

“Rushing to another important show?” He followed her, talking into her back, “Let me guess. Ex-Ambassador of Le Souffle Du Ciel?”

He wasn’t certain exactly why he was being so scathing. He supposed he was feeling too many things at once, but anger had always been the only emotion he was able to successfully express.

“I’m sorry, I forgot I had a prior engagement…” Maeve leaned over the bar and told the bar tender, “You can cut the pay in half.” The bar tender gave her a nod, and she hurried her way across the floor.

“You’re not leaving because of me, are you?”

Maeve kept walking. He followed her through the kitchen, and out the back door.

“Oh, come on. How bout’ I buy you a drink, Ms. Mercenary.”

Maeve walked faster, pulling out car keys from within a fold of her cloak.

“For old times sake?”

When it became obvious that Maeve was not going to turn around, he became irrational. He had to say something, anything to get a response, anything to stop Maeve from walking to her car, getting in, and driving away.

“How’s your husband?”

The singer stopped in her tracks.

“He enjoying his sexless marriage? Or is the fucking actually amazing now that you finally get to take control and be yourself?”

At that, she whirled around, her voice shaking with a deadly cold. “…How dare you.” There was more venom in Maeve’s voice than he cared for, but it didn’t matter. He got what he wanted.

“Where do you get off talking about him like that? How dare you.” She spat through her teeth. “He loves me. Real, consuming, self-sacrificing, jump in front of a goddamn train love. Not like you. You just wanted someone to be miserable with. You, you were complete bullshit. Just like the bullshit love you wrote in your bullshit books.”

It was too obvious, and too easy. He laughed a rude and ugly laugh. “Who are you trying to convince? Me, or you?” He shot her a pitying look. “Leave the poor man already. He might still have a chance at finding a princess instead of settling for a cold-hearted bitch.”

Maeve swung her arm back, and cracked her fist into the raven haired man's face.

The blow came much faster and much harder than he anticipated. His head snapped back, his footing faltered, and he tasted blood. But it didn't stop at that. The petite woman launched herself at him with all the violent malice and pent up agression of a caged beast. She threw out punch after punch until the much larger man finally found his foothold, and launched himself at her in retaliation. And right there, in the back parking lot of Lavender Lust Blues Pub, the ex-lovers broke into an all out bar brawl in a flurry of fists. Being the larger of the two, he eventually gained the upper hand and tackled Maeve to the ground, pinning her small arms firmly against the gravel. Beneath him, the young woman thrashed for all she was worth, like a live fish dropped in a deep fryer.

“Get the fuck off of me, Tristain!”

“Only if you agree to back the fuck off, Ivy.”

“Fuck you!”

“Good. We’ll just stay like this all night. I have all the time in the world.”

“Get off!”

“Suck me.”

“ARGH!”

Another rough round of struggling, another futile attempt.

“You know, you pack a pretty mean punch for someone of such little substance.”

“I dunno, something about you,” she snapped, angry tears brimming at the corner of her opaque eyes “just really makes me want to break your face in.”

Two more minutes of bucking and squirming later, Maeve finally gave in.

“Fine. You win. …Now GET OFF.”

He released his hold on Maeve’s arms, and climbed shakily back to his feet, out of breath and feeling like he had just been driven over by an eighteen-wheeler. The disgustingly loud cracking of joints snapping back into place could not be a good thing. He was most definitely too old for this shit. He offered a hand to help the other up, and had it roughly slapped away. Maeve pushed herself off the ground, dusted off her cloak and jeans, and stood to face him. After a few silent seconds of seething, her seemingly unyielding front finally gave way to a familiar haughty smirk, as the ex-Assassin took a step back to examine her handy work.

“God. I totally fucked you up.”

The world stopped spinning. For a minute, he couldn’t breathe, and forgot how to blink. He never thought he would see that smile again.

“…I went easy on you.”

“Sure you did.”

He felt the crushing weight being lifted from his chest, and for the first time in a long time, he drew in a deep cleansing breath.

“You should take a look at yourself…” Maeve was chuckling now, shoulders shaking. “I mean I really, really fucked you up. In fact, I don't think I've ever done that well against you without a weapon.”

He couldn’t recall the last time he was even inclined to smile. But everything about Maeve had always been so wildly infectious. He felt his lips twitch awkwardly into what was possibly the beginnings of an upward rise. They agreed on a temporary truce.

Proper social skills were vital to a Hero.

Ten years ago, they couldn't walk about in public without dodging into a back alley to avoid the multitude of sellswords, and professional hitmen out of their blood, or attract a barrage of angry, dissaproving stares from passersby who disliked the thought of a human and an elf together. Ten years later, they could walk bloody lipped and black eyed into the apothecary together, and nobody asked any questions, nobody popped out proclaiming threats of ultimate maiming. The man working behind the counter took the currency for the bandages without so much as a sideways glance, and then went back to flipping idly through his book.

They ended up back at his apartment.

Maeve shuffled around and commented that she liked what was done with the space. He replied that it was just the same old shit he always had hung on his walls. Maeve pretended she didn’t remember. When he asked if he could get her anything to drink, Maeve didn’t respond. He asked if Maeve was hungry. There was still no response. He sat down on the couch, and raked his fingers through his hair.

“… I apologize for what I said. It was out of line.”

He could see the stubborn pursing of her lips, but the young woman eventually realized the pettiness in not apologizing in turn. Maeve looked down, avoiding eye contact.

“…Me too. Your books weren’t bullshit.”

“Have you ever read any?”

“Only one.” She said, sitting down and reaching for the box of tourniquets and anti-septic to keep her hands from fidgeting. “Then I stopped.”

“Why?”

“Couldn’t handle the truth, I guess.” She ripped open the box and pulled out the string of packages. “That you were just messed up and there was nothing I could do about it.” She finished the statement with a resounding slap as she fixed the bandage onto her shin.

“They’re just stories.”

“Liar.” Maeve mumbled, examining her other various scratches.

He leaned into the couch, and watched as Maeve struggled to place a piece of gauze over an awkward cut on the outer edge of her elbow. He closed his eyes, and in an instant they were back in their old apartment, and Maeve was screaming at him for playing with one of her knives, claiming that it could have been poisoned, and he could have hurt himself. It was a memory, which while it seemed bitter at first, was one of the few he cherished. It was one of the only fights they had that contained no malevolence. When he opened his eyes again, they were back in the dark room, sitting in silence, listening to the clock tick on the wall.

“Some days…” He started slowly, “I feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions. Some days, I feel like I’m hovering in nothingness. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Maeve questioned defensively. “Call your therapist.”

“I stopped going to therapy a long time ago.”

“What? Why?”

“They can’t fix me.”

“Well neither can I,” She said sourly. “I was never meant to be anybody’s hero. You told me that, remember?”

“I didn’t mean it, you know.” His throat felt dry, the air clawing its way up to form words. “I never meant any of it.”

“It’s a little too late to start clarifying yourself now.”

“Better late than never.”

“Better never than late.”

“…You said you’d never leave me. What ever happened to that?”

The impulsive accusation wasn’t taken lightly. Maeve narrowed her eyes, a dark emerald thunderstorm rapidly brewing inside.

“It’s always about you, isn’t it? We’re all just here to come and go at your beck and call. You get tired of me, and you throw me out on the streets. You feel smothered, and you up and disappear for weeks. You can’t let go of the goddamn past, so you went ahead and ended it. Just like that. And you ask me why I didn’t stay with you? Because you left me, Vigil. You left me!”

Her voice rose higher and higher

“Haven’t heard a single word from you all these years, and we just happened to run into each other… you’re feeling lonely after a couple drinks and you expect me to all of a sudden hold and comfort you, and then lie down and give you that quick fuck you want? I have a husband. And some fucking decency!”

He knew Maeve was right. There was no use arguing. He was right about everything. About him, about them. Maeve wasn’t the one battling night terrors and suffocating loneliness. Maeve wasn’t the one at the end of his rope. She had her husband, and their sugar coated fairytale love sealed with the divine stamp of matrimony. Maeve wasn’t the one who wanted to die.

He was tired. So tired. He had been dragging himself around on broken crutches for years and all he wanted to do now was to sit down and never have to get back up. He was too tired for pride, too tired for shame, too tired to pretend that he didn’t miss Maeve every goddamn second of every goddamn day.

“Help me, Maeve. Help me.”

The young woman shook her head. “I couldn’t help you then. I can’t help you now.”

He allowed that to sink in. Deeper and deeper, until it hit the core of his being, and he finally understood. Really, truly understood that there was nothing more he could expect from the woman. Maeve wasn’t a little girl anymore. She had grown into a woman with a lifetime’s worth of resentment. Just like him.

“I was just a habit. A distraction. Something to take your mind off the fact that you had closed yourself off years ago. I was…”

Maeve stopped, and stubbornly tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She failed, and a single tear sprung out the corner of one eye. Losing control only made her more upset, and she wiped a hand furiously against her pale face. “I was just… convenient.”

He shook his head.

“No? No?” Maeve leapt to her feet, and spread her arms out dramatically. “Look at us!” She forgot about the tears, as they rolled down her face, one after the other, dripping off her cheeks and over the curves of her lips. “If you loved me, even just a little bit, how could we have ended up like this?” Her face was covered now, hot and sticky with moisture. “How, Vigil? Tell me!" She cried out between short, breathy sobs. “Tell me!”

A Hero must never show emotions, for they were the signs of weakness. A Hero could only be brought down by his own tragic flaw. Nothing else. Nothing else…

He reached out, and pulled Maeve into his arms. Maeve collapsed forward into him, sending them both to their knees and onto the floor. He buried his face into Maeve’s shoulder.

A Hero was something he could never be.

He didn’t even notice the tears until he saw the wetness slowly spreading a dark stain on Maeve’s shirt. He ran his fingers through Maeve’s hair, and whispered into the crook of her neck. “...Stay with me.”

He felt Maeve trying to shake her head, and he tightened his hold, gathering her tiny form closer.

“Just for tonight. Please.”

After a while, Maeve slowly nodded against his chest

And they stayed like that, on their knees, on the floor. Vigil closed his eyes, and breathed her in. In his mind, he saw Maeve smiling at him, and for a moment, he could feel all the broken pieces fall back into place again.

Maeve woke up in Vigil’s arms, to the soft thump-thumping of his heartbeat in her ear. Her head bobbed slowly with the steady rise and fall of the other’s chest. Bits of sunlight escaped from behind the thick curtains, and danced intricate patterns on the floor tiles. She closed her eyes, and selfishly wished that time would cease to exist, and she would never have to leave this embrace ever again.

Reality set in about five minutes later. She carefully tried to detangle himself from Vigil’s hold. It was more difficult than she thought, as he seemed intent on not letting go. She stretched and winced at the uncomfortable kinks in her back that had formed as a result of sleeping on the floor.

She sat back and watched Vigil sleep, the way she used to do in the mornings, until she was late for work and had to rush to shower and get dressed. She traced her fingers across Vigil’s face, over his eyes and nose, cheeks and mouth, and brushed dark strands of hair from his brow.

Why did such a beautiful person have to be born into such a hideous world?

She leaned in, and pressed her lips to Vigil’s for the last time. Dry and chaste, the way a five year old girl would kiss her little boy playmate in the sand box.

Into his ear, she quietly told him, “…Don’t give up. I’d never forgive you if you did.”

-------------------------

A week later, Vigil Asclades was found in his apartment, overdosed on sleeping pills. He stopped breathing inside the ambulance, two minutes before arriving at the hospital.

There were five people at his funeral. His sister, Azeroth and Phoenyx, and Maeve's twin, Mikhail. Tears were shed in moderation. They knew he hadn’t been well for years.

Maeve didn’t cry when she heard the news. What tears she had left for Vigil, they shed together that night on his apartment floor. It was a full three months before she drove out to the graveyard. She had always thought the people talking to gravesites were silly. It wasn’t as if the dead could hear them. But when she came up on the little patch of land and stared down at the name carved on the marble slab in the grass, she began to speak and found she couldn't stop herself.

“…I’m sorry I missed your funeral.”

She bent forward and laid down a dull, modest bouquet.

“So this is how it ends. I’m married, and you’re dead. Couldn’t have written it better yourself, huh? How many of your books ended exactly like this? How many times did you envision this scene in your head? Me, standing over your grave. Grieving, crying, regretting…”

She grit her teeth stubbornly beneath a mouth tightly closed, her molars grinding heavily into each other, and her bicuspeds biting into her gums.

“Just couldn’t stop playing the victim, could you? So you could wax poetic all day about how hard your life was. So hard that you just couldn’t take it anymore. A poignant, artistic end to your sad, tragic tale. You’re such a cliché, Vigil Asclades. Such a fucking cliché.”

Her fingers clenched, nails cutting into the inside of her palms.

“All you did was run away. All you ever do is run away.”

Her whole body shook from sheer effort as she tried to contain herself.

“Fuck you. Fuck you. You’re no tragic hero. You’re just a goddamn coward. And I hate you. I hate you…”

She felt warm hands on her shoulders, and she turned. The man behind her wore a dark suit and a strained smile, as he dabbed away the streaks of tears on her face with a warm compassion only he could provide.

“You might not have been able to help him…” He said, gently patting the pink edges of her swollen eyes, “But there are people who need you now.”

She turned her face away from his, but he cupped her wet cheeks and turned her face towards him again. “Please, Maeve. Look at me…”

There was an uncertainty in his eyes that she knew never truly went away, but there was also that unwavering conviction that had always, always been there for her.

“It will be all right, I promise.”

Maeve closed her eyes and buried her face into the crook of his neck. He smelled of hope and strength and things too good for her to deserve. Sighing, Maeve drew in a deep breath and pulled away. “I’m fine now. Let’s go home.” The look he shot her at this was on of questioning, but as Maeve laced her fingers through his, she gave them a gentle squeeze and nodded. “…I’m sure.”

Hand in hand, they turned and walked away, without a lingering glance back.

She didn’t know if Vigil was in a better place now. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. But wherever he was, the heights of heaven or the depths of hell, there was not a doubt in her mind that she was going there as well. Not a doubt in her mind that they were going to see each other again. And when they did, she would tell Vigil that he had been right. Maeve Harker was never meant to be anyone’s hero. In the end, she just wasn’t strong enough. Vigil hadn’t killed himself. She simply wasn’t strong enough to fight death away from Vigil.

She would tell Vigil that she’s sorry. For everything she said she would do, but wasn’t able to. And for everything she wanted to do, but felt too defeated to try. For everything they had, everything they lost, and every everything that ever was. She was sorry. Theirs was a story that couldn’t possibly be summarized through a series of events or defined by a pinwheel of emotions. The only thing she could do was apologize. For meeting Vigil, for letting Vigil down, and for the fact that she was going to love Vigil forever.

That would be what she’d say.

And then she would plant her fist so hard into Vigil’s face that the man was going to be seeing stars for the rest of eternity.

Description
Hero
By Kaia M. Harker

The first time he tried to kill himself, he was nine. After losing his temper for the third time that week, and beating the shit out of some child who had the unfortunate luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He figured he could eventually swing high enough to reach the necessary velocity needed for him to simply jump off and fall to his death right there under the monkey bars. It wasn’t very successful. He ended up with scraped knees and elbows, and a pronounced fear of heights that haunted him well into his adult years.

The second time, he was twelve. After his father told him that he would be happier elsewhere, in a little country across the Black Sea called Melican. He and his sister stole a lighter from the pantry, and he proceeded to command his sister to set him on fire. The younger child went crying off to their father. After that, he lost interest in his younger sibling entirely, and the lighter episode was incidentally known as the last time the two of them ever played together.

The closest he ever came to succeeding was when he was seventeen, after everything had gone wrong. The thought of death by amphetamines or liquor seemed a much more pleasant alternative to death by fire or death by swing.

He was in and out of rehab for the remaining years of his teenage youth, and soon after he found himself drafted into the Melican regular militia. It was ultimately a pointless and completely non-life-altering experience, but it did give him a lot of time to write. And by the time he was clean and had so valiantly served his country, he had finished the manuscript for his first novel.

Writing had been his salvation. His talent, his outlet, his whatever the fuck they liked to call it. Artistic expression. All he knew was that it made him feel better. None of his writings were purely works of fiction. And certainly not romantic fiction, the shit genre in which he allegedly claimed his fame. They were the autobiographical monologues of his inner demon, and the only way to shut him up was to drown him out with the obnoxious clacking of fingernails scratching across rough parchment. He developed the fixation at a very young age, and clung to it instead of toy swords and cheap parlor magick. They had predicted early on that he was an odd child, and would probably grow up to become an odd man. He hated it when other people pointed out truths about him, and after twenty years of listening to people point out the truths about his faults and his failures, he finally stopped going to therapy altogether. It made him realize that not only had he wasted half his life savings on shitty advice, he also managed to become needlessly dependant on prescription narcotics. Having lost his dealer, he was going through the first bouts of nausea, cold sweat, late night vomiting and the general ugliness that was cold turkey. He never imagined there’d be a day when the first thought that came to mind upon waking up would be ‘goddamn I could really use some Vicodin with my coffee.’

Addicted, alone, middle-aged, and just a little bit suicidal. The curse of the artistic soul and the destiny of one who chose to write and be resentful for a living.

It was a challenge and a thrill, writing. A cathartic ritual that desensitized through over exposure. It forced him to confront all the things that made him want to sleep with the lights on at night. It gave form to his phobias and structure to his fears. A private haunted house paved with letters, framed with syllables, and furnished with evocative metaphors. Great writers wrote to wield the emotions of others. He wrote to control his own. So he would never have to be scared again. Truly scared. Cornered in a dark, piss and mold smelling room scared. Held down by putrid meaty hands while the god of his universe watched on with a smile scared. Rape scared. Inside his office, his little pet shop of horrors, he would dissect and analyze and work back until even he realized the irony of it all. He was his own sickness and his own cure. A self-healing and self-destructive mode of being from which he could neither escape nor demolish. To let himself forget would mean not to write. And what would Vigil Asclades be if he did not write?

So he wrote himself into the same pitiful characters in the same pitiful situations again and again. The opposite of déjà vu – jamais vu. The same people, the same encounters, the same stories over and over, just packaged in a different leather bound volume, and somehow it all becomes brand new. That’s how the best memoirs are written. That’s also what happens to old people trapped in Alzheimer loops who meet their husbands and wives and sons and daughters for the first time every month.

He finally cracked a while back. Nobody saw it coming, except for him. He had read about it in some nameless volume on Pyschology that Azeroth had made good on collecting and always had suspicions that it would happen to him. He hit a dry spell that lasted nearly two years, during which time not a single word was written. His career in both militia and Guild recruit continued as always, but his latest half-finished jamais vu was dropped. When it was over, he was unable to churn out anything save for some scriblings in handwriting that he couldn't even recognize as his own. They said he had a mental breakdown. But he knew what it really was. It was the beginning of the fucking end. Writing simply couldn’t save him anymore.

Afterwards, he became even more of a hopelessly angry person. All he had was the boiling inside of him, day in and day out. Until everything boiled dry and the only thing left was the hate. Hate for people, hate for life, hate for all the things that should have happened for him, but didn’t. But most of all, hate for her. Hate for her empty vows and broken promises and how she had moved on years ago, yet he himself was still stuck here, right here, where he had always been. Like the old people. Like his more bitter than sweet blurbs. Stuck. Yesterday, today, and all of the tomorrows to come.

What he really hated, was himself.

He tried to kill himself for the fourth time two days ago, on his birthday. He went to the bakery and bought a single slice of cake and for god knows why, a candle. He dumped the colorful cut of pastry onto a plate, stuck the candle in it, shut off all the lights in his apartment and read the birthday greetings that had been slipped in with his mail. All three of them. As he watched the tiny flame dance and flicker, he decided that thirty-five years was long enough. He paid his dues. Besides, he knew he had hit the bottom when he found himself celebrating his own birthday. It was a personal memo written to him from above. The memo said: give up, you sad sack of shit.

He went into the bathroom, flung open the medicine cabinet and emptied every bottle he had into the sink, until the basin was filled with pills and capsules all colors of the rainbow. He reached in and grabbed a hefty handful. And then he stood there, one hand gripping the edge of the counter, the other out in front of him, a determined fistful of chalky pharmaceutical deliverance. He stared down at his closed fist. Do it. He swallowed once, and stared harder. Do it. He could feel the tiny beads of sweat starting to gather at the junction of his brows. Do it. Put it in your mouth. Do it. Do it.

He cursed, and let the tablets sift through his fingers.

He couldn’t do it.

Too weak to live, and too scared to die. He could see the great artistic geniuses laughing down at him. Hemingway was shaking his head. “You pussy, you fucking pussy.” he said. “I blew my head off and you can’t even swallow a couple of goddamn pills.” More laughing. “And to think you’ve tried your whole life to become a hero...”

Hero. The quintessence of masculinity. A man who cannot be stopped. He does not wilt, he does not gripe, and he does not ever compromise.

A Hero endured with resistance and dignity. A Hero bore through the hardships of a world that was chaotic, perilous, and painful.

He knew he shouldn’t have gotten that stupid candle. Fire, throughout history, had always made man feel invincible enough to attempt the impossible. Pills. What the hell was he thinking? He went to bed that night stomach full of beer and cake, and fell asleep wondering whether or not it was hard to get a gun in this neighborhood.

A Hero must act acceptably in the face of death.

Another eventless week came and went. Another night of driving around the same dimly lit streets, ripping through gears and barreling through stop signs. The concept of a weekend holds no real meaning anymore when you’re unemployed. Every day’s a fucking holiday. Another chance to get drunk and accumulate more outstanding tickets. He shifted up to fourth, the car gaining air as it charged off and crashed down along the rise and dips in the asphalt. He weaved blindly through the backstreets between sleazy love motels and dirty pachinko arcades, just waiting for the night’s first cowboy cop to come at him from around the corner, lights going sirens blaring. And he would gladly report, yes officer, I knew exactly how fast I was going, because you see the only thing that makes me feel alive nowadays is doing one hundred in a thirty-five.

A Hero lived by his own ideals of honor and justice.

Across the railway tracks, under the overpass. The world flew past in a murky haze of neon. The road signs blurred into one another, the buildings spilled backwards in the rearview mirror. The speed was as anesthetic as it was energizing, and sometimes it could almost make him forget where he was in a city that he was able to navigate through with his eyes shut. In the windshield, the words ‘happy hour’ shone at him in a glowing seductive red. The sign stood in front of a pub he had no recollection of ever seeing. He watched the bar and the sign slip past him. Then, abruptly, before entering the next intersection, he downshifted and turned sharply across four lanes. He pulled into the front lot.

He shut off the engine, and waited for the adrenaline high to recede. When he felt his heart rate slow down to a reasonable pace, he straightened his collar, left the car, and walked across the parking lot towards the muted hum of music and the line of purple light seeping through the cracked front door.

The pub was unexpectedly quaint inside. Its location was far enough removed from downtown to remain relatively un-crowded on a Friday night. Scattered beneath the dim lighting were pockets of insipid looking patrons hunched over small tables. Three men sat at the bar nursing bottles of beer. On the lounge sofa, a couple was heatedly engaged in a messy swapping of tongues and groping hands. A pianist sat at the piano churning out a soft blues backdrop.

He situated himself at the furthest end of the bar, against the wall. When the bar tender asked for his drink he pulled out all of the cash from his wallet, slid the bills across the counter, and told the bar tender to surprise him.

A Hero should drink excessively, but not sloppily.

A minute later the bar tender sat a glass down in front of him; its contents looked to have the consistency of vaseline. Fortunately the taste did not reflect its appearance. He sipped the drink and eyed the moaning drunks on the sofa, grinding to the rhythm of the music. “Oh yes,” the girl whispered, “yes, just like that.” The soothing piano notes slid between each other, smooth and silky, like buttered cream. He took another sip from his glass. Then, the pianist adjusted the microphone, and started to sing.

He looked up. Away from his drink, and away from the bar.

The rest of the pub disappeared. Everything disappeared, until there was only him, and that voice. The voice that shadowed behind his every footstep. The voice that lurked in the hallways of his empty apartment. The voice that sang to him every day, keeping him from writing, from sleep, from thought, from sanity. He rose to his feet, and took a step forward. Two steps. That voice.

There was no mistaking that voice.

He took another step. Then another. And before he knew it, he was standing in front of the piano. The pianist had her head down, and her eyes closed. He clenched his hands to stop them from shaking. A Hero must always possess grace under pressure. He opened his mouth.

“What’s a big shot like you doing at a bar like this?”

Maeve Harker lifted her head.

Those eyes were still the same ones he saw every night in his dreams. The singing stopped. Fingers froze stiffly in place, poised mid-play on the black and white keys. The silence echoed loudly against the walls. “Oh god,” the girl on the couch moaned, “Oh god, yes.”

Infinity passed in a second.

“…A friend called in a favor. I generally don’t do this type of thing anymore.” She looked down, and began hastily shuffling her music sheets into a pile, “I’m not a musician anymore.”

“Really. Still spend all of your time slinking around back alleys and preying on the weak?”

She shut the top of the piano and stood. “It’s good to see you again. Take care.” She picked up her case, stuffed the sheets inside, then turned swiftly and walked off the stage.

“Rushing to another important show?” He followed her, talking into her back, “Let me guess. Ex-Ambassador of Le Souffle Du Ciel?”

He wasn’t certain exactly why he was being so scathing. He supposed he was feeling too many things at once, but anger had always been the only emotion he was able to successfully express.

“I’m sorry, I forgot I had a prior engagement…” Maeve leaned over the bar and told the bar tender, “You can cut the pay in half.” The bar tender gave her a nod, and she hurried her way across the floor.

“You’re not leaving because of me, are you?”

Maeve kept walking. He followed her through the kitchen, and out the back door.

“Oh, come on. How bout’ I buy you a drink, Ms. Mercenary.”

Maeve walked faster, pulling out car keys from within a fold of her cloak.

“For old times sake?”

When it became obvious that Maeve was not going to turn around, he became irrational. He had to say something, anything to get a response, anything to stop Maeve from walking to her car, getting in, and driving away.

“How’s your husband?”

The singer stopped in her tracks.

“He enjoying his sexless marriage? Or is the fucking actually amazing now that you finally get to take control and be yourself?”

At that, she whirled around, her voice shaking with a deadly cold. “…How dare you.” There was more venom in Maeve’s voice than he cared for, but it didn’t matter. He got what he wanted.

“Where do you get off talking about him like that? How dare you.” She spat through her teeth. “He loves me. Real, consuming, self-sacrificing, jump in front of a goddamn train love. Not like you. You just wanted someone to be miserable with. You, you were complete bullshit. Just like the bullshit love you wrote in your bullshit books.”

It was too obvious, and too easy. He laughed a rude and ugly laugh. “Who are you trying to convince? Me, or you?” He shot her a pitying look. “Leave the poor man already. He might still have a chance at finding a princess instead of settling for a cold-hearted bitch.”

Maeve swung her arm back, and cracked her fist into the raven haired man's face.

The blow came much faster and much harder than he anticipated. His head snapped back, his footing faltered, and he tasted blood. But it didn't stop at that. The petite woman launched herself at him with all the violent malice and pent up agression of a caged beast. She threw out punch after punch until the much larger man finally found his foothold, and launched himself at her in retaliation. And right there, in the back parking lot of Lavender Lust Blues Pub, the ex-lovers broke into an all out bar brawl in a flurry of fists. Being the larger of the two, he eventually gained the upper hand and tackled Maeve to the ground, pinning her small arms firmly against the gravel. Beneath him, the young woman thrashed for all she was worth, like a live fish dropped in a deep fryer.

“Get the fuck off of me, Tristain!”

“Only if you agree to back the fuck off, Ivy.”

“Fuck you!”

“Good. We’ll just stay like this all night. I have all the time in the world.”

“Get off!”

“Suck me.”

“ARGH!”

Another rough round of struggling, another futile attempt.

“You know, you pack a pretty mean punch for someone of such little substance.”

“I dunno, something about you,” she snapped, angry tears brimming at the corner of her opaque eyes “just really makes me want to break your face in.”

Two more minutes of bucking and squirming later, Maeve finally gave in.

“Fine. You win. …Now GET OFF.”

He released his hold on Maeve’s arms, and climbed shakily back to his feet, out of breath and feeling like he had just been driven over by an eighteen-wheeler. The disgustingly loud cracking of joints snapping back into place could not be a good thing. He was most definitely too old for this shit. He offered a hand to help the other up, and had it roughly slapped away. Maeve pushed herself off the ground, dusted off her cloak and jeans, and stood to face him. After a few silent seconds of seething, her seemingly unyielding front finally gave way to a familiar haughty smirk, as the ex-Assassin took a step back to examine her handy work.

“God. I totally fucked you up.”

The world stopped spinning. For a minute, he couldn’t breathe, and forgot how to blink. He never thought he would see that smile again.

“…I went easy on you.”

“Sure you did.”

He felt the crushing weight being lifted from his chest, and for the first time in a long time, he drew in a deep cleansing breath.

“You should take a look at yourself…” Maeve was chuckling now, shoulders shaking. “I mean I really, really fucked you up. In fact, I don't think I've ever done that well against you without a weapon.”

He couldn’t recall the last time he was even inclined to smile. But everything about Maeve had always been so wildly infectious. He felt his lips twitch awkwardly into what was possibly the beginnings of an upward rise. They agreed on a temporary truce.

Proper social skills were vital to a Hero.

Ten years ago, they couldn't walk about in public without dodging into a back alley to avoid the multitude of sellswords, and professional hitmen out of their blood, or attract a barrage of angry, dissaproving stares from passersby who disliked the thought of a human and an elf together. Ten years later, they could walk bloody lipped and black eyed into the apothecary together, and nobody asked any questions, nobody popped out proclaiming threats of ultimate maiming. The man working behind the counter took the currency for the bandages without so much as a sideways glance, and then went back to flipping idly through his book.

They ended up back at his apartment.

Maeve shuffled around and commented that she liked what was done with the space. He replied that it was just the same old shit he always had hung on his walls. Maeve pretended she didn’t remember. When he asked if he could get her anything to drink, Maeve didn’t respond. He asked if Maeve was hungry. There was still no response. He sat down on the couch, and raked his fingers through his hair.

“… I apologize for what I said. It was out of line.”

He could see the stubborn pursing of her lips, but the young woman eventually realized the pettiness in not apologizing in turn. Maeve looked down, avoiding eye contact.

“…Me too. Your books weren’t bullshit.”

“Have you ever read any?”

“Only one.” She said, sitting down and reaching for the box of tourniquets and anti-septic to keep her hands from fidgeting. “Then I stopped.”

“Why?”

“Couldn’t handle the truth, I guess.” She ripped open the box and pulled out the string of packages. “That you were just messed up and there was nothing I could do about it.” She finished the statement with a resounding slap as she fixed the bandage onto her shin.

“They’re just stories.”

“Liar.” Maeve mumbled, examining her other various scratches.

He leaned into the couch, and watched as Maeve struggled to place a piece of gauze over an awkward cut on the outer edge of her elbow. He closed his eyes, and in an instant they were back in their old apartment, and Maeve was screaming at him for playing with one of her knives, claiming that it could have been poisoned, and he could have hurt himself. It was a memory, which while it seemed bitter at first, was one of the few he cherished. It was one of the only fights they had that contained no malevolence. When he opened his eyes again, they were back in the dark room, sitting in silence, listening to the clock tick on the wall.

“Some days…” He started slowly, “I feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions. Some days, I feel like I’m hovering in nothingness. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Maeve questioned defensively. “Call your therapist.”

“I stopped going to therapy a long time ago.”

“What? Why?”

“They can’t fix me.”

“Well neither can I,” She said sourly. “I was never meant to be anybody’s hero. You told me that, remember?”

“I didn’t mean it, you know.” His throat felt dry, the air clawing its way up to form words. “I never meant any of it.”

“It’s a little too late to start clarifying yourself now.”

“Better late than never.”

“Better never than late.”

“…You said you’d never leave me. What ever happened to that?”

The impulsive accusation wasn’t taken lightly. Maeve narrowed her eyes, a dark emerald thunderstorm rapidly brewing inside.

“It’s always about you, isn’t it? We’re all just here to come and go at your beck and call. You get tired of me, and you throw me out on the streets. You feel smothered, and you up and disappear for weeks. You can’t let go of the goddamn past, so you went ahead and ended it. Just like that. And you ask me why I didn’t stay with you? Because you left me, Vigil. You left me!”

Her voice rose higher and higher

“Haven’t heard a single word from you all these years, and we just happened to run into each other… you’re feeling lonely after a couple drinks and you expect me to all of a sudden hold and comfort you, and then lie down and give you that quick fuck you want? I have a husband. And some fucking decency!”

He knew Maeve was right. There was no use arguing. He was right about everything. About him, about them. Maeve wasn’t the one battling night terrors and suffocating loneliness. Maeve wasn’t the one at the end of his rope. She had her husband, and their sugar coated fairytale love sealed with the divine stamp of matrimony. Maeve wasn’t the one who wanted to die.

He was tired. So tired. He had been dragging himself around on broken crutches for years and all he wanted to do now was to sit down and never have to get back up. He was too tired for pride, too tired for shame, too tired to pretend that he didn’t miss Maeve every goddamn second of every goddamn day.

“Help me, Maeve. Help me.”

The young woman shook her head. “I couldn’t help you then. I can’t help you now.”

He allowed that to sink in. Deeper and deeper, until it hit the core of his being, and he finally understood. Really, truly understood that there was nothing more he could expect from the woman. Maeve wasn’t a little girl anymore. She had grown into a woman with a lifetime’s worth of resentment. Just like him.

“I was just a habit. A distraction. Something to take your mind off the fact that you had closed yourself off years ago. I was…”

Maeve stopped, and stubbornly tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She failed, and a single tear sprung out the corner of one eye. Losing control only made her more upset, and she wiped a hand furiously against her pale face. “I was just… convenient.”

He shook his head.

“No? No?” Maeve leapt to her feet, and spread her arms out dramatically. “Look at us!” She forgot about the tears, as they rolled down her face, one after the other, dripping off her cheeks and over the curves of her lips. “If you loved me, even just a little bit, how could we have ended up like this?” Her face was covered now, hot and sticky with moisture. “How, Vigil? Tell me!" She cried out between short, breathy sobs. “Tell me!”

A Hero must never show emotions, for they were the signs of weakness. A Hero could only be brought down by his own tragic flaw. Nothing else. Nothing else…

He reached out, and pulled Maeve into his arms. Maeve collapsed forward into him, sending them both to their knees and onto the floor. He buried his face into Maeve’s shoulder.

A Hero was something he could never be.

He didn’t even notice the tears until he saw the wetness slowly spreading a dark stain on Maeve’s shirt. He ran his fingers through Maeve’s hair, and whispered into the crook of her neck. “...Stay with me.”

He felt Maeve trying to shake her head, and he tightened his hold, gathering her tiny form closer.

“Just for tonight. Please.”

After a while, Maeve slowly nodded against his chest

And they stayed like that, on their knees, on the floor. Vigil closed his eyes, and breathed her in. In his mind, he saw Maeve smiling at him, and for a moment, he could feel all the broken pieces fall back into place again.

Maeve woke up in Vigil’s arms, to the soft thump-thumping of his heartbeat in her ear. Her head bobbed slowly with the steady rise and fall of the other’s chest. Bits of sunlight escaped from behind the thick curtains, and danced intricate patterns on the floor tiles. She closed her eyes, and selfishly wished that time would cease to exist, and she would never have to leave this embrace ever again.

Reality set in about five minutes later. She carefully tried to detangle himself from Vigil’s hold. It was more difficult than she thought, as he seemed intent on not letting go. She stretched and winced at the uncomfortable kinks in her back that had formed as a result of sleeping on the floor.

She sat back and watched Vigil sleep, the way she used to do in the mornings, until she was late for work and had to rush to shower and get dressed. She traced her fingers across Vigil’s face, over his eyes and nose, cheeks and mouth, and brushed dark strands of hair from his brow.

Why did such a beautiful person have to be born into such a hideous world?

She leaned in, and pressed her lips to Vigil’s for the last time. Dry and chaste, the way a five year old girl would kiss her little boy playmate in the sand box.

Into his ear, she quietly told him, “…Don’t give up. I’d never forgive you if you did.”

-------------------------

A week later, Vigil Asclades was found in his apartment, overdosed on sleeping pills. He stopped breathing inside the ambulance, two minutes before arriving at the hospital.

There were five people at his funeral. His sister, Azeroth and Phoenyx, and Maeve's twin, Mikhail. Tears were shed in moderation. They knew he hadn’t been well for years.

Maeve didn’t cry when she heard the news. What tears she had left for Vigil, they shed together that night on his apartment floor. It was a full three months before she drove out to the graveyard. She had always thought the people talking to gravesites were silly. It wasn’t as if the dead could hear them. But when she came up on the little patch of land and stared down at the name carved on the marble slab in the grass, she began to speak and found she couldn't stop herself.

“…I’m sorry I missed your funeral.”

She bent forward and laid down a dull, modest bouquet.

“So this is how it ends. I’m married, and you’re dead. Couldn’t have written it better yourself, huh? How many of your books ended exactly like this? How many times did you envision this scene in your head? Me, standing over your grave. Grieving, crying, regretting…”

She grit her teeth stubbornly beneath a mouth tightly closed, her molars grinding heavily into each other, and her bicuspeds biting into her gums.

“Just couldn’t stop playing the victim, could you? So you could wax poetic all day about how hard your life was. So hard that you just couldn’t take it anymore. A poignant, artistic end to your sad, tragic tale. You’re such a cliché, Vigil Asclades. Such a fucking cliché.”

Her fingers clenched, nails cutting into the inside of her palms.

“All you did was run away. All you ever do is run away.”

Her whole body shook from sheer effort as she tried to contain herself.

“Fuck you. Fuck you. You’re no tragic hero. You’re just a goddamn coward. And I hate you. I hate you…”

She felt warm hands on her shoulders, and she turned. The man behind her wore a dark suit and a strained smile, as he dabbed away the streaks of tears on her face with a warm compassion only he could provide.

“You might not have been able to help him…” He said, gently patting the pink edges of her swollen eyes, “But there are people who need you now.”

She turned her face away from his, but he cupped her wet cheeks and turned her face towards him again. “Please, Maeve. Look at me…”

There was an uncertainty in his eyes that she knew never truly went away, but there was also that unwavering conviction that had always, always been there for her.

“It will be all right, I promise.”

Maeve closed her eyes and buried her face into the crook of his neck. He smelled of hope and strength and things too good for her to deserve. Sighing, Maeve drew in a deep breath and pulled away. “I’m fine now. Let’s go home.” The look he shot her at this was on of questioning, but as Maeve laced her fingers through his, she gave them a gentle squeeze and nodded. “…I’m sure.”

Hand in hand, they turned and walked away, without a lingering glance back.

She didn’t know if Vigil was in a better place now. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. But wherever he was, the heights of heaven or the depths of hell, there was not a doubt in her mind that she was going there as well. Not a doubt in her mind that they were going to see each other again. And when they did, she would tell Vigil that he had been right. Maeve Harker was never meant to be anyone’s hero. In the end, she just wasn’t strong enough. Vigil hadn’t killed himself. She simply wasn’t strong enough to fight death away from Vigil.

She would tell Vigil that she’s sorry. For everything she said she would do, but wasn’t able to. And for everything she wanted to do, but felt too defeated to try. For everything they had, everything they lost, and every everything that ever was. She was sorry. Theirs was a story that couldn’t possibly be summarized through a series of events or defined by a pinwheel of emotions. The only thing she could do was apologize. For meeting Vigil, for letting Vigil down, and for the fact that she was going to love Vigil forever.

That would be what she’d say.

And then she would plant her fist so hard into Vigil’s face that the man was going to be seeing stars for the rest of eternity.