What have I done?

*Trigger warning: blood*

She was thirteen when her world came crashing down. 

Heroes, that was all she ever liked. Even as a little girl, those shinning figures had her racing around the house in silly costumes pretending she knew martial arts.

Every time she was asked what her future plans were. She would excitedly rant about how she would one day be smiling on tv, saving thousands of people while being praised by many. 

She was, of course, laughed off. 

"Only people who train forever become heroes, your just a little girl." They would say as they laugh and pat her head. But she would always puff her chest out and think of what they would say when they saw everything she would become. 

She would always smile as she daydreamed about everything she could become. The world was the limit, and she was going to ride that line until she was old, wrinkly, and too weak to stand.

Blood dripped off her skin and her ears ringed. Tears streamed down her face and blurred her vision. She didn't dare remove them. She didn't want to see her parents in front of her, stretched out on the sidewalk.

Time seemed to be escaping her because the blood on her hands appeared dried and itchy on her dark skin. Wasn't it just dripping?

The person who did this to her fathers, where were they? Would she be able to get justice? How could she freeze while they sat there? Could she have saved them?

Why couldn't she stop shaking? Why couldn't she call for help? They may still be alive.

She needed to get help. How was she expected to become a hero if she couldn't even save her fathers?

The strangled cry that fell from her lips made her jump and take action. She finally looked at her parents in the middle of the sidewalk. 

They weren't moving.  

The scream that fell from her lips sounded inhuman and far too loud to her ears.

People came running, heroes showed up to deal with the threat, but they were too late. 

She wasn't enough. She would never be enough.

Now, many years after that terrible day, the girl was experiencing another just like it. 

Blood dripped out of her hands as she clutched the wound on her stomach. The cut wasn't that deep, but there wouldn't be many places that would treat her.

The man stood over her, smiling victoriously. After years and years of fighting, he had finally brought her to her knees.

He looked her in the eyes, his blue ones sparkled with pride, and the women dark ones flooded with hate. The man felt like he had seen that look before.

"You deserve this for all the pain that you've caused." He whispered. His eyebrows furrowed as he questioned the guilt coiled in his stomach. 

He had taken down lots of people before. Why was she any different?

She smiled, her nose scrunched up as she bared her teeth in what might have resembled a smile if she didn't ready to attack him.

"You think I'm the villain in this situation?" She asked, her tone so bitterly sweet the hero thought he might gag.

"Of course, you tried to kill 30 people, 30 innocent people at that!" He shouted while she giggled quietly.

"You really don't know anything do you?" Her smile was real now, and he wished that it weren't. 

He remembered the warnings told about her. She was crazy had somehow managed to rope multiple heroes to her side. Theories were popping around about mind control.

Could she be controlling him?

From the way she was smiling at him, he would bet that the assumptions were correct.

Why was he so scared when he wasn't the one bleeding?

After talking for a few minutes, the girl finally shut her mouth.

She had shown the man everything she knew about the corrupt hero society. How they only cared about popularity, how they left people to die in wreckage rather than risk losing the fame they get for catching bad guys.

He felt like screaming.

He had given his life to save people. To never feel as weak as he did when he watched his mother die of sickness. 

He picked his job because he wanted to be the one in control. He wanted to lose himself into actions instead of sitting and thinking. He made himself move instead of crying when he should have paid attention.

And now he couldn't move. 

Scenes of all the shady things he was told to do flashed through his head. Why had he never questioned them before? Why hadn't he fought harder?

Why didn't he catch it?

He felt bile rise to his mouth. How could he sit by while all these things happened?

The woman was looking at him with pity. 

Why had he villainized her? Why had he made things so black and white in his mind?

Tears were flowing from his eyes now. A quiet sob fell from his lips, and he tried to hold himself together. The woman in front of him opened her arms out to hug him, and then he was sobbing into her shoulder. 

Why couldn't he see that he had been the villain the whole time?

A few faces popped into his head. The people he had done away with because they were threats to everything they had ever held true. 

A woman who knew a little too much to be allowed to roam free.

A child that walked into a scene that he shouldn't have.

Husbands that investigation had gotten a little to close to the truth. He covered up the daughter's tracks when she had run away from the scene. 

"Shh, It's okay. You can make everything better. You can make up for past mistakes. You can be the hero you've always wanted to be." She whispered quietly the man in front of her.

"You can cry for a while, but we need to get up again. We need to show them that we won't take this sitting down." By now she was smirking down at the man in front of her.

Her smile turned sinister as she thought about all there is to come. 

"We can show them they can't control us." And he smiled too. Because, one day, he won't be weak.

One day he'll make up for all the things he's done in the past. He'll make it up to the women, the child, that he had once known. 

One day they'll be heroes. Or go down fighting like they are.

But for now, they cried on an empty roof. Letting their sobs wash away the silence and letting memories roll out of their eyes. They were powerless today so they could be strong tomorrow.