some of this story might get triggering, if your worried about that you can check the spoiled box for possible triggers, but it will be spoilers so do that at your own risk.
non consensual body modification, mind control, implied/referenced r*pe and non-con (not explicit), dubious consent, and I think that's it but if you find more list them and I will add them to this list.
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It wasn't really his fault, he hadn't been in control of himself yet.
She was a hero, unstoppable and unyielding, ready to save everyone she could.
I was in a dark place, and I needed someone to save me. I had needed a hero, and that hero was you. And when I needed a friend, someone to help me heal, well what better friend than the one who would save me? Someone to drive away that loneliness.
He had wanted a hero, someone to save him.
Her team had been fighting a monster in the shape of a man, capable of twisting reality itself to his whims, and she was the only one who had managed to escape. Everyone else had been twisted into mocking parodies of the hero's they had been, nothing but toys to the man's whims, their bodies, minds, and even souls made into whatever he wanted them to be.
Reality is what I want it to be.
She still didn't know how she had escaped, everyone else had fallen the moment the monster had noticed them, but not her. She had only been forced to flee because she couldn't bring herself to hurt her teammates, her friends.
She just couldn't bring herself to hurt a friend.
So she had run to her only friend left, he didn't have any powers sure, but he was smart and no one knew her secret identity but him, together they could plan and come up with a way to save her friends and to stop the monster.
The heroes always win in the end, they save everyone.
When she got to his apartment he was waiting for her, but something was off, he was anxious about something, scared even. Maybe he had been watching the news and had seen everyone else get taken down? Rushing in to hug him only got a flinch, which confused her even more. He'd never been scared of her before.
She always knew how he felt, and how to make the hurt go away, she couldn't stand to see a friend in pain.
And then her friend spoke "you can't beat him, I don't think any of the heroes can '' she went to speak, to reassure him that they could beat him together, nothing could them when they worked as a team, but he interrupted her before she could start. "He's a reality bender, the only ways to beat one are to surprise them or to bring a stronger reality bender, and he's already given himself minor precognition, I guess you guys getting so close before he noticed really startled him"
When friends work together there is nothing they can't do.
That brought her thoughts to a halt, her friend had never not believed in her before, hadn't thought there was something she couldn't do, there was no enemy she couldn't beat. She had always been his hero, even before she had been his friend. So his doubts stung, but still they couldn't just give up!
A true hero never surrenders, they never stopped fighting until the day was won, and she was a true hero.
"We can beat him! You said it yourself, a reality bender has weaknesses and with only minor precognition we just need to set a trap he can't escape" he smiled at her then, and that smile always made everything feel better. "I never said we couldn't beat him, I said you couldn't. There is something I need to tell you, something I really should have told you a long time ago. I'm a reality bender, just like him but with less fine control, anything I want to happen, happens"
He could always rely on her, she was his friend, and friends could always rely on friends.
That… that was something, sure she had wished he had told her sooner, then they could have been hero's together, something she occasionally dreamed about, but if he was a reality bender "then you can help me fight him! You said a stronger reality bender could beat him, and even if you aren't stronger I bet he'd still be distracted and I could take him out!" well if he was really a reality bender then he could help!
She always believed in him, and she always believed him, such similar lines. It makes sense how they had gotten mixed together.
"I know I'm stronger than him, it's how you made it out in the first place" that brought her up short, he had already been protecting her? "So you already saved me? Why didn't you stop him from changing the rest of the team?" if they had all been immune to the reality bender she wouldn't have needed to run, and her team could have stomped the reality bender flat. So there had to be a reason he hadn't, maybe a limit on how many people he could protect at once?
He was a good man, He could never hurt her
"I wasn't protecting you, he just couldn't change something I had already changed" he had changed her? When, and what exactly had changed? It couldn't have been anything significant, otherwise her team would have noticed, and since the other reality bender had changed them her friend obviously hadn't changed them, not that he would in the first place.
She was smart, capable, powerful, and untouchable. The perfect hero.
"And me being a reality bender isn't what I needed to tell you, when we first met I had been in a dark place, my power's were completely out of control, whatever I wanted to happen happened, every minute desire, no matter how small or contradictory, granted. It nearly drove me insane. The only reason it didn't is because I wanted to be sane. I would die and come back, because I wanted it to end one moment but had wanted to live forever just before, and so I would die and come back.
Everyone I knew was gone, the world only remaining because I was so focused on myself and the world immediately around me, and in that state I had wanted someone to save me, I had wanted a hero. And so you came, a desire granted in an instant. And with you there I finally managed to control myself long enough to want nothing other than to control my power and for some semblance of normalcy, it was only a fraction of a second, but that was long enough.``
Well that was … quite a story, she'd never heard the story of why he had been alone in a small clearing in the woods, and with a bit more thought she didn't really know why she had gone to those woods in the first place, him drawing her there made sense, but he wasn't done talking.
Sometimes he just needed someone to listen.
"But I didn't just want a hero to save me, I also just needed a friend, someone to trust and rely on, and since I wanted it …. It became true, and so you were my hero and my friend"
If those were the changes then she didn't really mind, if she had known there was someone in the woods who needed a friend and hero she would have been there in a literal heartbeat, she always saved everyone she could, and here it was just a little more guided.
A good hero sees the best in everyone.
"I'm not telling you this just because, I want you to think for a minute, I know your smart, smarter than me, tell me, what was your life like before you met me, not just minor details, something specific that you've never told me before, something that will surprise me" that …. That would be hard, she had talked about everything with him, being the last survivor of her species, escaping to earth as a young adult and starting a life, before deciding to use her power to save people, the first person being her friend. There wasn't much of her life he hadn't heard of or experienced with her, so how could any of it surprise him.
Reality benders aren't necessarily more creative than a normal person, they still start as something human, and they can't think of every little detail, especially in a rush. There were bound to be some gaps and missing memories, the best way to deal with that was to have the details be something you couldn't notice missing, nothing you could prove didn't happen. A simpler way was to make people want to ignore the missing pieces.
"Even just describing the faces of your parents would do, you never told me what they looked like, any details on your home planet, how many moons were there? What kind of government was there, how many countries? General population? What kind of plants and animals? How many oceans?, any fine details about something from before we met '' she couldn't, she couldn't think of anything they hadn't already talked about.
"He couldn't change anything I had already changed, If I had just made you my friend he could have still changed everything else about you, the only constant you would have had was being friends with me, and even then he could have changed how you thought of friends. He couldn't change anything about you because everything about you is something I made or grew from something I made. Every single detail, it's why you don't have any skin imperfections or illnesses, I wouldn't have thought of adding something like that."
"a destroyed homeworld, something that couldn't be proven wrong. Light travels at a set speed, it'd be thousands of years before someone found out your planet never existed in the first place, even retroactively giving you a job and life was just me creating a job for you and retroactively filling it into your story. I wanted you to have a happy life, and so it happened" she didn't know what to think, her whole life a lie? Her entire existence, something he had made up in the midst of a panic attack? That he had only added in the details to her life after? Where had she even gotten her costume? What had her interview been like? Where was the ship she crashed onto earth with? How had she never noticed before?
Of course she believed him, she always believed him
"I haven't changed anything about you since that first day, I couldn't even if I wanted to, not without wanting it more than I wanted to you. A friend is someone I can rely on, and with my powers I couldn't rely on someone who I could just wink out of existence due to an argument."
"I never meant to create life, or to twist it to my whims like I had, and I haven't used my powers since I was able to turn them off, but I did it anyway, and I'll understand if you hate me for it. … I'm not even sure you can hate me, and I think the only reason you didn't figure it out sooner is because I never wanted you too."
Yes this changed things, it couldn't not. But even if he had created her she was still at her core a hero, and she was still his friend. Even if he had started her life, what she had made with it was still her's, she was still a person, she still had free will, and she could make choices all her own.
She would always be his friend, and that was her choice to make.
"So you made a smart, capable, powerful woman and you only made her want to be friends with you? Why would I hate you for that? Sure you could have told me sooner and without something forcing your hand, but I wouldn't hate you over something like this. And I think I can hate you, I have definitely been upset with you before."
" we will definitely be talking more later, but right now we have a bigger problem to deal with"
A hero will put others before themselves.
She could always understand him, even when he couldn't understand himself.
"Yeah, the other reality bender. I can deal with that alone. And I don't want to risk changing anything about you because you were to close, or have you distracting me from the fight, a single stray thought and reality will change, and while I think I can't change you, I don't want to test it" the thought of letting him fight that monster alone was nearly painful, and she was about to firmly deny it when she stopped to think it through, she wouldn't really be able to help would she? She was the strongest hero to have ever lived, but she was also one of the smartest too, and she knew he was probably right. That didn't mean she'd listen, but she knew how to lie.
She would always protect him.
'Your right, this body you made is very distracting isn't it? Especially in spandex, actually why did you make my costume spandex? Got anything else you want to get off your chest?"
A hero can bring happiness just as well as safety
That got a smile out of him, his dour mood lifting slightly with the return of their customary teasing "well you were based on my ideal woman, at least in part. And what kind of hero doesn't wear spandex?" Well most of them actually, even she had her costume upgraded to a more durable material after the first few wardrobe malfunctions, even if she was fireproof her costume wasn't, even if she kept the same skin tightness and color scheme. The other hero's tended to wear bulkier armor.
"I wanted you to know that, and I figured it was better to tell you myself rather than you finding out because I started bending reality and circumstances changed so that you'd find out on your own. I can't affect you directly, but I can change everything around you and well, that's not much different when you get down to it. The other reality bender just wasn't that smart."
And with that last sentence he vanished, she could guess what had happened, he'd done what he needed to do before turning his powers back on, and then he'd left to go fight the other reality bender, so with a thought she tried to fly through the window towards where the fight would be happening, but the window didn't break when she flew into it, the doors didn't open and were unbreakable, and not even the walls would budge, he didn't want her to follow him, so she couldn't.
The only thing she could do was watch the T.V. he already had set to a news channel covering the fight, a news reporter had been filming the reality bender during his fight with her team, and while the reality bender had twisted done something to the reporter He hadn't changed the camera, instead letting everyone watching see what he had done to the heroes and civilians, and it immediately put what her friend could have done into perspective.
The teen, or at least the person that looked like a teenage boy, was living out whatever twisted desires lived in his head, she could only imagine he was indulging in every fantasy he'd ever had, even something that looked just like her was there. And she briefly wondered why the channel hadn't stopped the recording for airing, when she realized that the man wanted everyone to watch, and so they would. That kind of power was horrific, and what he was doing with it was even worse, but suddenly he stopped and froze, looking tense before dropping the hero he was playing with and then between frames he vanished.
The street was still a twisted mass of non linear space and none of the people on the camera were moving beyond twitches and breathing, but the man had just vanished. And then the street snapped back to normal, her friend appearing on the street with a disgusted look on his face as every person stood up and slowly returned to what had to have been their normal selves. Still not moving but this time obviously asleep, then he vanished again and appeared back in front of her.
"So you want to keep talking now or save this conversation for later, because that took a fair bit out of me, mainly because I had to keep reversing changes I was accidently making, But still"
AN-
this was made to both practice writing dialogue and to get this plot bunny out of my head, I wrote it in an hour so it might not be the best, still hope other people can get some enjoyment out of it though.
criticism welcome and appreciated!
cross posting the royal road under Snow the eternal
