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hero hated being inside aloe’s lab for obvious reasons. being in your worst enemy’s base is bound to be a shitty experience, especially if its against your own will. he struggled against his bonds, his back strapped to one of the various lab tanks aloe had. he’ll get out, he always does, but time practically slowed here. the door opened and quickly closed shut as the mad scientist stepped in
“sugar! i was wondering when you’d wake up.” god, her voice. hero let out a sharp exhale just from hearing it
“stop calling me that.” he replied immediately. it felt like he had to say this everytime they talked
“what’s wrong? not happy to see me?” aloe walked towards him with a smirk on her face. hero was always above her (to be fair hero’s usually flying), but with him on the floor aloe towered over him. she had to contain a giggle of excitement “come on, you can trust me! tell me, how do you feel?”
hero looked at the floor. he wanted to leave badly, but he knew if he struggled aloe would only get more annoying. doing anything in this situation only made her worse. getting angry would cause her to swoon, trying to negotiate made her argumentative and theres no point crying for help when the walls are soundproof
so he did the only thing he could think of, he ignored her. aloe waited for a few seconds before realising what he was doing
“ohhh i see, you’re giving me the silent treatment!” her grin still didn’t leave, not that hero saw anyway “have i done something wrong? every time you look at me its always with those intimidating eyes… it’s rude to keep secrets y’know, we’re friends!”
he tried not to pay attention to what she was saying, but it was hard when there weren’t any other noise around them. aloe made sure there wasn’t any on purpose so that there was nothing to distract them from each other. hero kept burning patterns onto the ground until a sharp foot tap snapped him back
“so rude! i invite you in and give you a lovely spot in one of my more finer rooms and you just ignore me! if you were anybody else i’d kick you out!” oh how hero wished he was (almost) anybody else right now. aloe tuts and combs a hand through her hair “you used to be so nice but now you only treat me with cruelty..”
he is not letting aloe have one of her pity speeches again. hero looked up at her with a sharp gaze “that was before you became evil!”
“ugh” aloe rolled her eyes “here we go again. i’m not evil!! just because i have a different moral compass-”
“you don’t have one at all!”
“that’s besides the point! oh hero we used to be best buddies! we used to study together and you’d be really good at maths, but i always kinda sucked at it so you always helped!” aloe sighed, circling around hero “remember when we found out we had our engineering classes together and how overjoyed we were? we weren’t meant to sit at the same table but i sat next to you anyways because i loved talking to you..”
hero considered tripping her. this was the main reason he hated being trapped here, aloe always reminisced about their past. she did it so often hero wondered if she was like this when no one else was around, and he always had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer
“and the one time we built that robot arm for our project! to think we started out so small..” she absentmindedly kicked with her prosthetic leg “it took us so long to find the pieces! i remember having to dig through trash heaps to find some of the parts, but it was so worth it in the end. im so glad i got to do that with you.”
aloe glanced at her captive with a soft smile, but hero didn’t even notice. he was back to counting the tiles on the floor. he had to ignore her.. but he couldn’t help but listen. besides from being literally forced to, a part of him would always miss this side of her. his facial expression was still the same though, grim annoyance
“... but now you’ve become so awful,” she must’ve gotten mad that he wasn’t responding “i try to talk to you and you ignore me. and you won’t even answer my calls!”
hero couldn’t help but roll his eyes at that one “you literally kidnapped me!”
“and why’d you think i had to do that, asshole!” when hero looked up at her, she jolted for a moment “we used to be so close but ever since that- ugh!”
even if hero wasn’t looking, which he was now, he’d be able to tell she was backing away from him. he almost wondered if aloe felt bad for insulting her, but that’d be giving her too much credit. she looks at him through broken glasses and he realises there isn’t hatred in her eyes at all. its just misery
“is it because i wasn’t good enough for you? is it because i was embarrassing to you? is it ‘cause i couldn’t live up to your new lab rat?” she stepped closer to him
“no, its because you’re-”
“because im ‘evil’? is that really it? you left me, after all we’ve been through, because you think im evil?” she was walking to him with clenched fists and hero realised his position here. he didn’t know how violent she could get and he didn’t really want to find out
“our jobs literally oppose each other! you know we couldn’t-”
“...oh thats it. thats it!” aloe stopped and stared down at him “y’know ever since you built that suit, which THANKS for not telling me about by the way, you got a saviour complex! that’s why you actually left, wasn’t it?”
“you know that’s not why! like i said, it’s because-”
“do you know how much it hurt when i realised who you really were, hero?” both of them stopped for a moment “it took so long for me to piece it together because i didn’t want to believe it. you started becoming distant and then some masked vigilante comes around destroying my creations and you never spoke to me again. you hid your little project but told me you quit and like a fucking fool i believed you.”
the both of them looked hurt by this argument. hero knows he had to cut ties from her because she was the villain and that was it. he would say it again and again to her and himself. so why couldn’t he bring himself to speak now?
“for someone so caught up in heroism, you’re never honest to me. im right aren’t i? you abandoned me for a suit. you left what we had for your power fantasy-”
“its not that, i.. i want to help people, aloe. that’s all i’ve ever wanted to do, you know this. i pushed you away because i just didn’t want to hurt you in the process and i’m-”
“but you did. you may have helped others, but you went ahead and hurt me the most.”
neither of them could talk after that. they both looked at the floor together, an awful tension in the air. aloe tried to giggle like before but it didn’t take a genius to tell it was hollow
“look at us bickering like an old couple! i would love to chat more about where to put our flowerbeds or reminisce about the past, but i’ve got business to do!” her smile was almost haunting as she skipped over to the doorway
“oh and thanks for sitting still like the good little boy you are! since i’m so nice, i even asked cyborg to bring your little lab rat over! he’ll be in the dissecting room if you want to see him~.”
with a sudden rush of adrenaline, hero struggled against the rope holding him back. he had to save his partner no matter what