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He's happy now.
They're happy now. It's not just the boss who got what he wanted. So did that meathead he's been in love with since they were squires.
The monsters have been beaten, haven't they? The big black beast of legend dispatched by the power of Gloreth, and the cult that took her name in vain destroyed and their walls tumbled. It's a storybook ending. Everyone's happy.
Except you're still dead and I'm still alive.
Your statue is still there in the kingdom they founded, and the sword is as sharp as it was when he stopped me from finally getting to see you again. I didn't want him to stop me, but he did the thing that you never did. He apologized.
Maybe that's unfair. Maybe they hid you away from me after they burnt their village to the ground. Maybe you tried to tell me where you were going and they stopped you and burnt your notes. Maybe they kept you busy turning you into the hero who would deserve the statue.
Maybe you were scared of what they would do to you if you invited me in, if you went looking for me, if you said I was your friend. You were only a child, then, and they were supposed to know better. They said I was a monster.
They were wrong then, but they're right now. I spent a thousand years as the monster outside the walls, the scary thing that they needed you to protect them from. Even though I spent most of that time trying to show them the monster that was inside the walls, trying to tell anyone who would listen about you.
About how you grew up to be strong and beautiful. About how you put on your armor and took up your sword and were brave when there were threatening things around. About how you took your armor off when you were done and wept for the friend that you once had, the one who you would welcome back in a heartbeat if she wasn't busy being the scapegoat outside the walls. About what it's like when the people around you have betrayed you because they were too afraid to be compassionate. About how much you never wanted any of it, never wanted to be a hero, a leader, a statue.
You tried to tell them about you, about us, but they were too busy making you into a hero to listen. I don't blame you for it. I've never blamed you for it.
Will they forget you now? They don't need a statue with a sword any more. They don't need a hero and a legend, and I can live a few lifetimes as a horse or a cat or something so they forget about me, too. I can let you and me die together, finally. They'll move on and we can fade into history.
But I kind of liked causing mischief for them, when it was me and the boss. It was a little like being with you again. Is it bad that I want to keep doing it? But if I go back to him, to them, now, then the cycle starts all over again, doesn't it? Once enough people know what I can do, know that I'm still around, know that even the strongest weapons they had couldn't kill me, they're going to be afraid of me again, and they'll trot out someone to be their hero and banish me for however long I decide I want to stay away from them. It'll probably be that meathead. He's one of yours, you know? Can trace his family all the way back to you. He's got your hair. He's got your fondness for cute creatures, and he's got your love of…things…other people are afraid of. I don't think he got any of your brilliance, though. He probably also has…whatever it was that kept you doing what they wanted, instead of telling them that the monster they were creating out there was your friend, so they should find some other fool to make into a hero.
Both of them have spent too long of their lives trying to change something stronger and nastier than they ever were, and even together, they couldn't do it. If that meathead became a hero, a champion, a legend, it would push the boss away. I could get to work on him, making him a proper monster while his boyfriend became a hero. It would be a legend for the ages, passed down to generations of children about their titanic struggle, the battle between good and evil.
They'd become us. And I'm old enough, smart enough, wise enough to know that nobody else should ever become what we became. They spent a thousand years behind those walls afraid of everything the cult told them to be afraid of, because of us, because I couldn't hold in how much I felt betrayed by you. I'm not giving them an excuse for another thousand years because I'm jealous of what those two have got.
I did let him know that I was still around, though. He was the first real friend I'd had since you, and he deserved to know that some stupid blaster couldn't get rid of me that easily. But now that he knows, he should forget about me. It's easier if everyone thinks that both the great hero and her greatest nemesis are gone. Then nobody will ever worry if the lesser villain will start going back to his old ways and make trouble for everyone and his husband-slash-nemesis will have to be called out to defeat him once again. Like he was ever going to be a real problem without my help. If he hadn't been set up as the assassin of the queen by that cult, he never would have been anything more than a hero to them. He would have been just like that meathead, and the two of them would have been meatheads in love.
We could have been meatheads in love.
I would have been anything you wanted me to be.
That's literally anything. Because shapeshifter. Which you knew.