She remembered that line in the Dark Knight. She had sat with Brenton in the air conditioned movie theater, thrilled to be seeing the hottest summer blockbuster and all the while picturing bragging to the guys at home and ruining every scene for them. It wasn’t often they got to go to the movies, but Brenton had bought two tickets for her as a birthday present. He’d assumed she’d take Damien or even Mike, but she knew how much her brother had wanted to go and asked him.

And then came the line. Kyle couldn’t remember who said it or even exactly how it was phrased. But she knew it. You either die a hero or live to see yourself become a villain.

She knew it was true. Not even just it Gotham City, but everywhere else. People that considered themselves heroes always got too full of themselves and did some ridiculous thing with all their great power. Then they were no longer heroes. They were evil.
Maybe it was the heroics that brought the villainy out in people. If an extraordinary deed already marked a person, doing the slightest act of injustice or selfishness could be considered tyranny.
There were no standards to qualify people heroes or arch enemies. It was all a comparison, as was everything else in the world. Were you more or less superman than the person in front of you? Was this new action more or less key to the city worthy than the last?
Let ground balls go through your legs all the time and catch the would’ve been RBI sac fly and you’re praised to the heavens. Fail every test and then ace the one that raises your class average and suddenly you’re the star student.

All you had to do was be better than yourself.

But that quote implied that people only turned bad. Maybe all people were born with heroism inside of them. Maybe if you didn’t put that heroism to use, you’d be considered a villain for withholding that possible good. Maybe we were all born heroes, ready to spread our capes and save the world.

But what if God looked at you in your mother’s womb and said “I’m sick of leotards and corny catch phrases”? What if he said there were too many super heroes around here and he’d really appreciate a change of place?

What if you were born the villain?