Paradox

[WP] You've discovered that nothing can kill the hero until they beat the dark one. You and the hero are now working together to cure all previously incurable fatal diseases by infecting the hero with them and waiting to see how the universe conspires to cure them of it.

*****

"This is getting rather complicated," said Tom, expressing what was on everyone's mind in the room, which included Tom, the hero, the dark one, Jane from accounting, and Sylvie from marketing.

"Can you start again from scratch?" asked the dark one, who had a bald head, a mellow face, and a calm voice, which was rather at odds with the expected creature of entropy. As it turned out, you can be the end of all while looking like a perfectly normal person living in a small house next to a pond, lost in a field.

"I'll try," replied Tom.

It started rather well, didn't it? The hero and Tom the sidekick. Kicking evil's ass and taking names. Evil is a rather broad term describing each and everyone that happened to cross the hero's plans, plans that might have been less than shiny at times. On the same topic, the hero was a somewhat generic term too, used for the sake of convenience. The hero was no hero, she knew it better than most.

"I guessed," said the dark one, whose only crime was to be chosen by the universe to be, well, the dark one. It didn't stop him from tending his vegetable garden and fishing at the pond.

Hero and dark one, called as such because some great power, conscious or not, picked them. They had a role to play. Tom and the hero understood when, despite all the bullets, the wounds, the explosions, the beheading, the splattering at the bottom of a cliff, and the repeated suicides for the sake of science, the champion just wouldn't die. And the dreams kept pointing at the small man, again and again, and again.

Society had gone forward from the tales of old. There was no more good and evil, the five people sitting in the living room belonged to neither. The universe had not. The universe saw in black and white. Good, evil, happy ever after, the end.

Humanity evolved in a direction cosmic powers could not understand, nor did they care. Up until now.

Tom had read the stories, knew his friend had all the markings of a fairy-tale. Wasn't hard to guess what was expected from the dreams.

They rebelled. Decided to abuse immortality to - paradoxically - do something good for humans, as a hero would.

She got typhus, was infected with everything she could come across. Curious minds came, learned, and devised serums and solutions. Another week, another sickness cured. They met Jane from accounting. They had explained the situation in detail to her. She had replied, that it was a bad idea, that breaking the laws would make things worse one way or another. Tom and the hero laughed, joking that you should be scared of the accountants, that the accountants always ended up right one way or another.

But the universe was not passive. If the scene wasn't played out, it would force it. New pandemics and contagions spread, faster than they could cure them. Tom gathered a team of scientists, taking samples and devising cures as fast as possible. Logistics made it hard to spread the vaccines and antidotes, people died by the thousands.

And humans learned of the fate of the hero and the dark one. In despair, some tried to kill the great foe, only to realize it could only be harmed by the unwilling hero.

The arm-wrestling between the universe and chosen continued. Only two humans remained untouched by weakness and sickness, the hero and the dark one, to the growing hatred of society.

Against an unending tide of loathing and death, the hero and the dark one came together at his little house with the pond lost in a field. With Tom, Jane who was too good at calculating the needed doses to spread across the world to not have her on the team, and Sylvie from marketing who had tried to preserve the hero's image.

And the hero didn't kill her foe. Instead, they sat and drank tea. The universe might have been a bitch, the dark one wasn't, and he didn't deserve to die.

Outside the windows, cameras filmed, and crowds grew seething. Who did they think they were? Condemning humanity to a horrible death just because the hero - and she was far from a saint - couldn't bring herself to kill a single person to preserve the world? When she had done very evil deeds already?

Indeed, she couldn't. And if that's what was needed to save the world, then it might have been better to let the world die.

And the universe complied.

The land was split, whole cities sunk into the growing abyss born from Earth's core. History, life, love, war, all was engulfed in the hungry void in a cacophony of screams and sinking seas.

All, except the small house in the countryside with the pond.

No one could kill the hero as long as the dark one lived. No one could kill the dark one but the hero.

No one, including the universe.

Outside, the universe was coalescing. No cameras, no crowds, only a piece of the field, the vegetable garden, and the pond. All sickness had been cured indeed, for no one was left to be cured. The void had taken everything, save for the room and the land occupied by the hero, made untouchable by her presence.

They exploited a loophole, this one and only time, to act as a good hero would. It killed the world.

"I warned you," muttered Jane.

This was the precise moment when Tom and the hero knew the accountant had been right and they shouldn't have laughed at her.

Good, bad, and oblivion. The universe didn't care about the rest.

Tom, the hero, the dark one, Jane, and Sylvie contemplated the void outside, and the void gazed back, annoyed but powerless.

"What do we do now?" asked Sylvie in the tone of someone who had seen it all.

The dark one grabbed a fishing rod from the cupboard.

"How about sitting at the pond?"

There they sat, at the end of the universe with their feet in the water. The dark one teaches Tom how to prepare a line while looking at the end of space, time, and everything that was and will be.

Stars and comets and voids and galaxies looked down upon the small group at the pond.

The dark one threw a line.

*****

THE END.

I'm sorry, I forgot to complete Ten Times the Trouble, so maybe tomorrow?