The misadventures of a Main Character [Complete]

LXXIII - Valuable Life Lessons

Buttercup shrugged. "Well, now the feeling's mutual at least."

"Inconceivable," Main said. The world spun kaleidoscopically. "But I felt it - this external force was magnetizing us together this whole time - and now I don't feel it. What's going on?"

"The will of Autoris is fickle," Buttercup said.

 "This wasn't divine intervention! I saved your life!" he said. "I-I destroyed the world to be with you! That's the way things are supposed to go: I should love you, and you should love me!"

"Saving me doesn't mean I'm indebted to love you," Buttercup pointed out.

"It doesn't?" Main asked, dumbfounded. That was why heroes rescued Princesses, wasn't it? So they could love and be loved? 

"It doesn't," Bevan chimed in. "Did it work between us when I saved your life?"

"It did not," Main said.

"No, it didn't," Bevan said. "But without you, I'd never have met Larry. We're going to buy a farm together, and work on breaking that pesky curse of his."

"Indubitably," Larry Trotter said, plucking flamingo feathers from between his teeth. 

*

"But... Greg brought Helena back from the dead, sort of," Main protested. "They ended up together!"

"True," Helena said. "But it took five years, and at least half of Greg's library before we had anything to talk about."

"This is getting way too sappy," Main complained. "I'm one example away learning a valuable life lesson or something."   

He watched Buttercup's gaze drift over to his Nemesis, and his fight for the fate of the world.

"You like him, don't you?" Main said, "He saved your life."

"I might, I haven't decided yet," she said. "Being twenty one is hard."

"Being thirteen sucks," Main muttered. He'd fallen out of love like a boulder falling from a third-story building. Had it even been love at all? The disingenuous feelings mocked him. He wondered if there was an antidote to the potion that would make him young and idealistic again. Maybe if he found a way to wipe his memory, he wouldn't feel so bad.

"Main, are you alright?" Greg asked.

 *

"No," Main said. Another thought was reeling in his mind. He looked around. Nemesis was down to the last dozen worms now, the sunset was in full-swing, slow emotional music was building up, and all of his side-kicks had rallied together. This was a curtain call. They were nearly at the...

"Oh no, not this time," Main said. "I'm refuse to play along with this."

He sprinted away, down the hill and along the coast.

*

 The heavy thumps, Main realized, were Gregory's chasing footprints. Gregory and Helena followed him, trying to cut him off. The massive troll kept pace for the first three days, until his arthritis forced him to stop. 

Main gained a momentary lead by hitchhiking across the ocean. He couldn't fix what had already happened, but he could deprive them of an ending. That would teach them. He often caught sight of Helena's silhouette in the distance, swimming. She tailed him for another two days once they'd landed on the opposite shore,  her zombie endurance pushed her after him like a greyhound to a rabbit. 

"You can't just run from this!" Helena said, as Main entered a paddock of corn maize. 

"Try me!" he shouted back.

He lost her in the corn fields. His aching feet carried him without purpose through woods and mountains. He thought it had been random, until he recognized the familiar jutting cliffs and roiling water. The Cliffs of Insanity. Main approached the edge.