Let's say there's a girl. This girl is stuck in a terrible dystopian world and she is one of the few who can save it from total destruction, one of the few with that one special skill, power, bloodline. After many years of losses and victory, death and sorrow,  the world is saved.

Everyone knows her name. Everyone looks up to her. Everyone turns  to her for answers now.

But everyone from the beginning, most of her friends, her family, their gone. The ones who started the rebellion, the ones there for the first battle, the ones who died in that battle and many more to come. The ones who were captured, disabled, murdered in anyway but death, are unresponsive.

And this girl starts remembering all the others before her, who could’ve ended this world of tyranny so much sooner, and wonders.

Maybe this is why no one wanted to end the terror and murder and just all around crappiness. Because no one wanted to change what they’ve always known. They didn’t want to deal with what would happen if they lost. They didn’t want to deal with what happens if they won. She doesn’t want to deal with it.

Because she is plagued with  terrors of what had been, with grief of what was lost, with fear for what’s coming. She can’t take being this perfect ruler these newly liberated people want her to be. They want to lean on her, but can't they see she'll collapse under them all? That she'll let them all down? They lean on her, but who can she depend on? Who's going to be her shoulder when her knees buckle, her back bends, when her shoulders hunch under all the weight?

There used to be someone, the one who was her shoulder, her rock, her world. But he's gone. The evil queen, the crazed king, the devilish angels, or whatever evil villain you want to  insert, killed him. Cut out his heart, tore him apart and put him back together, burned him to a crisp, right in front her. She dreams of his beautiful face, of  his screams. His loving embrace, the flames licking at his melting face. His mesmerizing eyes, how empty they were when his soul left him. He’s gone, she’s here, and in dire need of some stability.

There are others, men and women who look at her as more than a savior, who hope to be more to her than people she saved from disaster. But when she finally takes a shot, tries to move on, she scares them off. They don’t understand what she went through anyway. They don’t like her scars, her savage behaviors, her nightmares. They don’t like how she clings to them at night. They wanted someone strong, immortal, someone incapable of being broken.

But that’s not what she is, and neither are most heros. They’re messed up, lonely, scarred. Respectively, they’re allowed to be like that. They saved the world  at the cost of their liveliness, their morality, their sanity. But others don’t get that. They got the happy ending, but most don’t think about the price paid for that.

Our hero, like many before her and many others to come, will be lonely. Partly because she lost the one for her, partly because there is no one who knows what she went through. Who don’t get why she doesn’t sleep (to keep the nightmares away). Who don’t get her heavy alcoholism (for the nightmares trail into her days and change her world to a world of fire and death).

But no one likes a sad ending no matter how improbable it may seem for things to end decently. So let’s just say she finds a guy (or girl) who finally, finally, understands her broken soul and they fall into a beautiful romance of fighting off the others demons.