You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Buddy Pine had never loved anyone. He hadn't loved his mother and he hadn't loved his father. He idolized Mr. Incredible but he never loved him. He never loved Mirage and he never loved himself – not even when he was Syndrome (but that's when he came close). He didn't even think he could love.
He could hate. He knew how to hate very well.
But he couldn't love.
But then she changed all of that.
Violet Parr. He had kidnapped her, stealing her away from her parents and her brothers and her precious life. Why? To make them all suffer. If it weren't for them, Buddy would be as close to happy as he could be. She had resisted, trying to use her pitiful powers against him and he had laughed in her face. No longer did he let his childhood fire and immature ego get in his way. He was stronger now; smarter. She couldn't harm him.
She fought back for three days. He got the silent treatment for two. And then, something changed. The atmosphere between them began to growl, becoming fierce and tense. As the days began to blend together – time losing meaning as they continued an odd dance – Buddy discovered he could love. And he couldn't just love anyone; he could only love her. He couldn't explain how it had happened or why but all of a sudden they weren't any of their old labels.
They were a them, we, us.
He kissed her and she tasted bitter. She tasted like an enemy; his arch rival's baby girl. He held her closer and tried to believe she wasn't who she had been – when he looked back she wouldn't scream Parr or Incredible.
She wouldn't be the hero to his villain, she would just be his.
Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth
I have to go, I have to go
Violet pulls the scraps of paper out her sleeves – wrinkled and dirty after weeks of hiding. She listens carefully for Buddy but he's in the shower. She has a few sweet moments alone. She curls on the couch, sinking into the plush cushions and unfolds the paper. She reads again the words she has memorized; the words she never thought she would wish she could change. It was the e-mail, outlining her orders.
As far as the agency knew, it was all going to plan. She had let Syndrome kidnap her. She had kept herself alive by convincing him she was weak and not a threat, by letting him think that her family was destroyed by her absence (her family members played their destroyed parts well). She had let all this happen while she crept around his home, collecting evidence and pictures of his wrong doings, proof that Syndrome was not dead and was still committing crimes. The Agency knew of his existence but needed evidence to prosecute him on.
She now had that evidence.
And the Agency would be waiting for her call; she would have to alert them soon.
Soon, she would be out of his life forever. He would be prosecuted and either locked up for life or condemned to die. She shouldn't have cared; he tried to kill her and her family. He was a villain and villains deserved whatever they got. But when he touched her he didn't feel like a villain. He felt like a man and he felt like he loved her. (She didn't know what love felt like but it came from his fingertips and from his heartbeat).
She felt like she loved him back.
Ah, what a cliché. She had never been one for them but she could not deny the truths in her heart – she wished he was someone else, anyone else, so she could be free to hold him like she so wanted. But neither of them was free. He was trapped by his past, by the horrendous acts he still didn't blink at committing. And she was trapped by her duty to humanity; to use her powers to put people like him away.
And in the blink of an eye, she would be gone and he would be in prison.
Your hair was long when we first met
Buddy Pine's faults were innumerable. His weakness, however, his main weakness was his pride. He believed himself to be infallible. He knew all of the plays and he knew all of his enemies. He would never be caught unaware and he would never be questioned. He was powerful and brilliant and he would own this world.
His ego was a close second.
Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
Violet closed her eyes, legs shaking. She had sent out the alert to the Agency. She had twelve hours left to spend with Buddy. And then Supers would storm the doors. She swallowed hard and pushed her actions from her mind. She teetered on unsteady limbs to Buddy's bedroom. He was asleep, so innocent and childlike that she almost couldn't believe he was a murderer.
She sat on the edge of the bed, running her hand softly along the outline of his face. Her love; her heart. She was breaking on the inside.
She wondered if, when he woke, he would be able to see the guilt on her face. He didn't know it yet, but soon everything he knew would be coming down. His brilliance and his organizations and his dreams for the future, the world, would end because of her.
She presses a kiss to his temple knowing he will hate her for the rest of his life. She was the thief who had stolen what he thought had been safeguarded, hidden and inaccessible to the rest of the world. She wondered if he realized he had let her in or if she had slipped in, so quickly and efficiently that he accepted her presence, welcoming her into the folds of his heart.
She regretted being the fall of his Empire. He had needed to be loved.
He ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed
Buddy went about his morning, making his breakfast and checking on Violet. She slept late into the day and he wondered how she could sleep with the sun spilling on her face like that. His body, moving of its own accord, went to her slumbering side. He kicked off his slippers, lying down on top of the quilt she was snuggled under.
Unconsciously, she rolled into his side, tucking herself around him.
He wrapped an arm around her, feeling the sun illuminate his own face. Between her breathing and the sun he understood; it was all about being warm, being protected.
And history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once
She wakes up, his arms around her. She lets the world fade in and out and she focuses on his hands. On the surface, they look like the hands of any inventor – scarred from things gone wrong but steady, almost graceful. She looks at them and does not simply see the hands of her loved one. She sees the hands of a killer.
She remembers that moment like it was yesterday – the first time since her childhood she had actually felt afraid of Syndrome. He had been in his office (a place that she had been expressly forbidden to go but she had never listened to anyone's rules and she wasn't going to listen to his) and she had been peering around the door, spying. He had his hands on his hips, staring at a monitor. There had been an aerial view of a skyscraper on his large monitor – she could see the dots that were humans coming and going.
"Now," he muttered – talking to himself was a habit he had picked up in his years of loneliness, he would speak to himself even when she was in the room – tapping his fingers across his keyboard. "Let's see if you work."
Violet had frowned. He had been mumbling about a new type of weapons system lately and she had been going mad subtly searching for the blueprints. Yet, he had never indicated it was anywhere close to testing, and what would he be testing it on anyway?
She came to her conclusion when he finished typing and the skyscraper exploded.
She'd had to fight to keep quiet.
But since then, she'd been thinking about her own mortality. She had been thinking about how those people's lives had all been over in an instant. No warning, no reason, just over. She would never know all of their names – no one in the world would know every single name, let alone their histories or their feelings or who missed them or who they would miss.
It was the first time she had thought about being forgotten.
You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
He only told her he loved her once and she hadn't been awake to hear it. She had fallen asleep on the couch, slim body draping across the arm, legs heading for the carpeted floor. He had picked her up, cradling her in his arms as he moved her to her bed. She was so slight, so tiny in his arms that she reminded him of a doll.
He shook his head of such thoughts. It would do no use to compare her to a doll. She was not a doll, she was a living person.
He slid her beneath the blankets, her arms automatically wrapping around her pillow. He cleared her hair from her face, giving her a goodnight kiss on her cheek. As she shifted beneath his caress, the emotions he had been trying to push away came bubbling to the surface – the truth he could not deny.
He leaned close to her ear, whispering, for the first time in his life, "I love you."
Beneath the stars came fallin' on our heads
But they're just old light, they're just old light
"Why?" Violet whispers, looking at him as he wakes up. She knows they can't have many hours left and ever since she received this mission, she'd been thinking about asking him this question. She had never imagined she would get the opportunity.
"Why what?" His confusion made him look cross.
"Why do you want to hurt my family so much?" His face hardens, closing off. "I know you hate my dad but a lot of people hate others and they don't become like you."
Buddy doesn't know how to tell her that it wasn't just her father that he hated. He hated everyone. Her father was just the one person he had, once, thought could change that. He had mistaken blindness, getting caught up in the whirlwind of a hero's fame, for something that could have been a father-son love. A lot of fans had loved Mr. Incredible back then, many of them young boys who wanted to be Incrediboy like he had. In many ways, her father had been his last hope and when that hope had been killed, he had to destroy what had destroyed him.
Buddy doesn't say any of this. He simply looks away. "Let the past lie," he advises.
And then he leaves her in bed alone.
Your hair was long when we first met
Let the past lie.
Solid advice, he knows. But he doesn't know how to do that himself. He can't rid himself of the years that plagued him, putting heavy weight on young shoulders that shouldn't be so bowed.
He looks at her and thinks her shoulders are bowed too. They had been when he had first encountered her; heavy with the weight of being an outcast, of being broken and not knowing how to repair. He had understood her, even as she tried to hide behind her long hair and not let anyone see. He had seen her and he had understood her and, ever since then, he had hated himself for it.
Now, he plays with that long hair and thinks he would have been better off if he had never understood her.
Samson came to my bed
Told me that my hair was red
Buddy traces her features and she holds her breath; he has only just come back and she can feel time growing short in her bones. He taps his finger on her nose, along her forehead. He tangles a hand in her thick, dark, hair. He plays it across her collarbones.
"Red," he says, dropping her hair.
"Hmm?"
"If it were red you would be your mother."
"I'll never be my mother."
He says nothing.
Told me I was beautiful and came into my bed
She kisses him. It's long and it's deep and it leaves her panting. He's blushing and she finds it endearing. She knows he hates showcasing his emotions on his cheeks but it's one of the only ways she can read his thoughts.
She kisses him again and wonders if he'd blush if she called him beautiful.
Oh I cut his hair myself one night
A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light
It's growing darker. The Agency will be here in the early morning hours. She looks up into his eyes and he looks back with trust. She's unable to live with herself. She's well aware she'll hate herself later for it and that if the Agency ever found out she'd probably go to prison, but she needs to have a clear conscience. She knows she loves him and she knows she can't go behind his back. Love is about honesty and she must be honest with him.
And so, she spills her secrets to him. She confesses everything she had done and how she was the one to turn him and how he would be captured by dawn. She says she'll understand if he hates her and if he runs away now. She says she's sorry she did it and she's sorry she fell in love with him and she's sorry he'll never be anything but a villain and she's sorry she'll never be anything but a super.
She's sorry their love could never be real and she's sorry she had to be the one to do this.
And he told me that I'd done alright
And kissed me 'til the mornin' light, the mornin' light
And he kissed me 'til the mornin' light
Buddy is constantly surprising Violet. He closes his eyes against her harsh words, bright spots of red appearing on his cheekbones that showcase his anger. Yet, when he looks at her again, there is no animosity in his eyes. He moves so he is on top of her. She looks up at him, almost fearful. Will this be the end of this? Of everything?
She'd almost rather go now than watch him leave in handcuffs.
Instead, he captures her lips. He sheds her of her clothes and she sheds him of his. They fit together for the first time. It's her first time for anything and it's the first time that ever meant anything to him. It's magical and it's gorgeous and, as she clings to him, she tries not to cry because she knows that it will never be again.
They hold one another until the outside sky begins to lighten.
"Not long now," she warns him.
He gives a cocky grin but his voice is solemn. "Not long at all," he agrees.
He kisses her deeply again and she feels the goodbye in his touch and it kills her.
Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
Buddy rubs a hand between Violet's shoulder blades, soothing her into sleep. She has drifted off to dreamland but looks troubled. He steps out of bed, away from her slumbering body. Even now, as he knows that she's his real enemy – not some fanciful memory of Bob Parr – he can't bring himself to hate her or regret his actions or call himself stupid for not noticing.
He isn't who he was when he first kidnapped her. He's something more.
He's a mere man who fell in love.
He looks at Violet and wishes love were enough to save them.
Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed
He went to the kitchen and made himself his breakfast of toast. Today, he adds something else. Something that will make it all painless and will not give that blasted Agency the satisfaction of being the one to take his life. He will not be their victory.
He takes to his own bed and makes sure to lock the door behind him. Violet will not be the one to find him.
Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down
Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one
And history books forgot about us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once
It's been two years and she still aches over him.
Violet's mind is caught in a constant loop of that house, that last night. She's thinking through her actions and how she could have saved them both. If only she had broken her duty as a super earlier. Being loyal and saving lives, she discovered in hindsight, was too much of a sacrifice when weighed with losing the one you loved.
She wishes, every day, she could have had more time with him – a lifetime. She wishes she could have trotted him in front of the Agency and said, 'he's reformed'. They could have shaken the very foundations of the strict villain/hero lines and begun to build something new; something as brilliant as he and just as driven. They could have filled the lines in with colour and they could have changed the world.
Instead, she sits in her madness.
She's mad from loss and she's mad from knowing that no one knows she's lost. There is no record that she loved him. There is just unnecessary evidence – a dead man needs no trial – from a routine mission. There's nothing to say that their love burned brighter than the sun and they broke all the rules and they could have built an entire Empire if only they had been given the chance.
They are not history. They are not legend.
He is dead and she is no better.
You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first
I don't own anything recognizable. The song is Samson by Regina Spektor.
~TLL~