Heartless Romantic

A/N: I'm kind of rusty. This is basically inspired by my brushes with (untreated) bipolar disorder. It's a very personal monologue but it's amazing how much better I feel writing about this pairing again – it's been a very therapeutic experience. Anyway, regardless of all that, I've done my best to keep characters as true to form as I interpret them and hope the main themes shine through well enough. The title itself is meant to be as every bit ironic as it sounds.

Any questions or comments, feel free to leave them in a review or PM.

Rated T for language, references to sex and emotional/physical abuse.

Her mind lives tidily, apart

from the cold and noise and pain,

and bolts the door against her heart

out wailing in the rain.

~ Interior by Dorothy Parker

I almost certainly should not be here.

Not at this hour.

Not at all.

This isn't a first for me but I'd be lying if I said I held myself to any sort of reputable standard when it comes to this - when it comes to her. I've been getting careless, impatient; become the host of a number of uncharacteristic traits that I ordinarily despise in other people and recently - only recently - I've started to question how healthy my obsession really is. For a heart-stopping moment I fear her repulsion in learning that I watch her so closely like this...but relief washes over me when I remember how truly fucking sick she herself can be.

Her home lies in the suburbs: a fairly typical house in an entirely typical street. In the daylight, the walls shine an alabaster white, but in this chilling embrace of midnight darkness they've somewhat lost their brilliance. There's a slight sway to my body as it moves with the wind and for a while, I attempt to convince myself that her burning bedroom light keeps me dry in this heavy, hissing downpour outside. As if. She has no reason to be awake at this hour if not to tempt me with the possibilities of what she could be doing, alone or otherwise. Those thoughts are enough to keep me soaked, keep me coked... make me thankful for this god awful weather we always get around this time of year.

Sometimes, she risks too much, appearing at the window, nude, in profile. She'll notice my presence over the curve of a bare shoulder, turn and glare at me – scowl right at me with such disdain. Disdain I deserve. But not really – that's all in my head. No, in reality, she doesn't know I am here every night but I get a kick out of buying into my own fantasies. It's all I have right now.

The sodden earth complains quietly underneath my boots as I shift my weight onto my other hip, freeing my limbs from the stiffness of this prolonged stillness. I won't stay out here all night, just long enough to temporarily satiate a dark longing I no longer deserve but want all the same. I habitually tell myself that this is enough for me, that I can make this work...but I know that she's in there, right now, just wondering and wondering about what to do about my growing boldness, about my wandering out where she can clearly see. I stopped writing her a while ago now because she refused to heed what I had to say, but in those letters, I made it quite clear the lengths I would go to to atone for all that I've done.

The unconscionable things I have done. Not just to her, there have been others, as well; other casualties of my personal internal tragedy. Though their heartbreaks never affected me like this, never brought me here, reduced me to this. I'm selfish, utterly selfish. I should let Fang get on with her life already...I should get on with mine...

But that's not what she wants with me, and I know it. The pain she has, I gave to her. The wounds she suffers, only I can heal. I'm not imagining this – I'm not equivocating anymore. It's not healthy, but it's what makes us right.

It's not healthy, but it's what makes us right.

Long ago, she told me that if people were rain, then I'd be the drizzle and she'd be the hurricane. I remember this when her bedroom light darkens and the rainfall picks up. I hunch my shoulders, ignoring the sting of icy water down my back and pop the collar of my coat to shelter my neck. Had I not spent so much energy misleading her back then, I'd have resented her misjudgement - her inability to cut through my carefully crafted illusion.

The truth is, is that the Lightning Farron Fang met all those years back in Palumpolum is a fiction, an apparition; a phantom I dreamed up to make myself feel better about the life I had been leading. Nothing had ever seemed quite right about my own existence – but it's not like I had any time to really examine what that feeling might mean, especially after my parents died. It was easy to bury my concern under mounting responsibilities but it was always there in the background, niggling away at me...a splinter in my mind.

What a perfectly clichéd way to put it, but no less apt, considering. Because I'm not normal, I'm unbalanced; unwell in my head. I'm more than that...I'm damaged. And damaged people are dangerous, because they know how to survive...

This is what I should have told Fang from the very beginning, when I started to sense a change in the nature of our relationship. If I was less spoiled, less selfish, less needy I would have run away from her before she had the chance to fall in love with me. She might have dismissed her feelings for a passing crush that way...though something about her makes me doubt that, somehow.

You don't really push someone like Fang to do anything – you can't force her. She's too stubborn, just like me – only I give up a lot sooner than she does. That's why, after distancing myself from her at first, I was really quite surprised to find her still hanging about, still making an effort with me even though I told her to leave me the fuck alone. I was in the middle of one of my self-loathing episodes and really, wanted nothing to do with much of anything. Getting out of bed at all was a challenge, let alone being mindful enough to act like a decent human being. And yet she persisted, almost oblivious to my wicked treatment of her, my darker thoughts about her, whether she was around or not. She'd drop by unannounced so I couldn't avoid her; eventually I'd grow irritated about something that had nothing to do with her and I'd snap and kick her out. She'd give me space, give me time then she'd be right back over, right back to where we started. Just the two of us. Happy, happy, happy.

It was months before I concluded that actually, my life always seemed a little brighter with her in it, that I might be a little happier if I chose to fight this relentless cycle of my shifting moods. We took down the Fal'Cie together, why should this be any different? Why should I let some cruel quirk of nature wreck havoc on my life when I was the mistress of my own fate and I was the only one who could get my shit together? Was I really so frightened by my own growing feelings for her that I had to make excuses not to pursue them?

No.

And so I cooed and wooed and took her – for everything. Just like the others, just like before...only this time, it was different. So very much so. This time, I was losing...getting lost in her undying, death-defying love for me. Fang didn't hold back, not for a second. She wasn't afraid of getting hurt by me...and so I wasn't afraid of hurting her...

That liberation was new to me...was entirely too intoxicating for someone who had kept her emotional disorder to herself, under wraps, for years. Each time I felt the shadow of my sickness lurking over me, I wanted to tell Fang to just stop, to listen, to tell her that I really wasn't playing around – it was serious. But the nature of the beast was never that forgiving – it wouldn't let me be that honest. It was easier to skate by on half-truths and mystery than it was to face my own reality and risk losing her.

Or risk her misunderstanding; not fully accepting that my affections for her could come and go and yet simultaneously never leave. Not comprehending that I'm not really myself sometimes, that being the precious diamond she always compared me to meant me having so many faces, some of them I'd never even met before. I couldn't give her any real stability like this, I couldn't keep many promises – but I wanted to. So badly.

At times, I found myself resenting her, because I could never shake the feeling that she knew, that Fang always knew there was something not quite normal about me and my unpredictable mood swings. The woman is much more intuitive, more sensitive than she wants anyone to know – and she is definitely not stupid. There was far too much understanding in her eyes and reactions to my craziness that made me call into question what "little" she claimed to know of me...because of my silence. I wasn't falling for it, I didn't buy it – if she wasn't going to admit to knowing this about me, then we were never going to have a much-needed discussion. I would go on believing that she knew exactly what she was getting into for so long as she was content to ignore the glaring inconsistencies in my behaviour.

I would go on opening myself up to her power, bending my knee and bowing my head to it. Her endurance became a citadel for all of my bad behaviour – Fang could take it, she was strong enough. Stronger than anyone I'd ever met...stronger than me. For all the times I thought I'd blown our relationship to pieces, I'd find her standing there, resolute, breathing in the clearing gunsmoke of my self-inflicted sabotage. I couldn't chase her away – couldn't make her go...no matter what I said to her...no matter what I put her through...no matter how much my unbalanced mind tried to break her...

On my back, in our room, in the dark, I lay on our bed, utterly pissed off. Pissed off at what, I don't even know. Maybe it's how difficult things have been between us lately – how sensitive she has seemed around me when my feelings get the better of me. I don't want to hurt her, but I can't. control. my. moods. That's a source of constant aggravation for her, because she keeps making the mistake of holding me to expectation. Reasonable expectation – the kind she's entitled to have as my girlfriend. She shouldn't have to worry about me taking off on special occasions, making excuses to get out of plans we'd made weeks in advance or it just being impossible to get along with me at times. She shouldn't have to second guess her trust in me. And yet, this is where we are, despite both of our best efforts. Fang asks me for nothing but my love. So why do I feel like she should be asking me for much, much more?

There's a sudden increase in volume in the next room, the jostling of bodies at the front door. Good, they're leaving. I was getting steadily more irritated by Snow's raucous laughter, the annoying hum of chatter and conviviality in general. Maybe now I'll get some rest – but probably not. A sudden prophetic insight tells me otherwise.

I hear her sigh against the closed door, pause there for a moment, then stick the security chain on with a sharp scrape. She slows down when she passes our bedroom door but must think better of it to come in here right now: my feelings are mixed about that decision because whilst all I want is to be left alone, I don't want her resentment of me to grow the longer we go without communicating. That's frustrating and stressful for me, setting this imaginary deadline on my mood shift like that. I can't even say for certain that this is what will go down...I'm just going by what's always happened with everyone else. That's all I have to go on.

The gentle sashay of her walk floats through the apartment – I normally love that, why am I so angry at it tonight? When she begins clearing up in the lounge, I can honestly hear the glasses she collects chime with her disappointment in me and I start to resent her for that. I start to hate myself for being unable to do anything and completely loathe the world for making me like this. It was Lovers' Day exactly one week ago and I was so inordinately happy. What happened? As if there's any point in asking myself that...

It takes a while, but eventually she comes through – doesn't even look at me while she starts standing up her birthday cards on the dresser opposite the bed. It's still dark in here, she only uses the light from the lounge to navigate this space, so I doubt she would even make out the growing disgust on my face she supplies with each carefully placed sentiment. For a brief moment, I excite myself thinking about fucking her – painfully – right against that dresser - just to punish her for adding to my despair, like this. But the desire is fleeting, I'm not gonna do that. I'm all over the place when I'm cycling and I can't be sure that I am thinking straight.

She smells of expensive perfume and tear stains as she glides around the edge of the bed, begins to undress herself – strip completely bare. For some reason or another, it bothers me when she throws on a baggy t-shirt after that, as if that's supposed to be her way of telling me that I can't have her – she's too upset. I don't need another reminder of that: they're all around the fucking room, judging me, opining. And if I get out of bed now to move rooms, to escape, there will only be more histrionics. So I lie there, feeling uncomfortable, feeling her warmth spread through the sheets when she joins me in bed. Of course I note the distance between our bodies, how she's practically balancing on the edge to avoid even touching me. That's fine by me, really. I can't trust myself with her body right now anyway – I might hurt her. I might enjoy hurting her. Still, this all feels a bit awkward, and despite how exhausted I feel, I don't see myself being able to sleep any time soon.

Minutes pass by wordlessly. The silence thickens by the second. I start to wonder if she's actually fallen asleep already when:

"Say something."

I don't want to further upset her by letting my mood colour my tone, so I try to be as flat and neutral as I can when I reply to her. "There's nothing to say." Seriously, what could I sa yto make her feel better right now?

She gives a funny sort of half-pained, half-incredulous scoff and shakes her head, falling quiet for another few moments. Then: "I don't think I can do this anymore." I'm not very surprised; I couldn't either if our roles were reversed. At least I wouldn't want to, anyway. "What did I do to deserve this? You told me you wanted to make my birthday so special for me. You were the one who insisted on buying all the expensive food, on inviting everyone over. It was so important for us to share this together, you said. You've been building this up for weeks!" All of it, true. "I could live without the flowers, or a gift, or a card or even a 'happy birthday' – I could deal with you breaking them promises, Lightning. But to just abandon me when I want you with me the most? On a day like this? And for what? You can't even tell me what I did to you!"

Fang has done nothing to me, nothing but accommodate my issues for so long, love me even longer than that. The very fact that she's not to blame for my mood makes me feel even worse... I thought I had a better handle on all of this by now, but I guess I don't.

She starts sounding more upset than angry but I've already started to shut down, emotionally – out of self preservation and nothing more. Quite honestly, her tears aren't making me feel much of anything because I'm too busy trying to keep a lid on my own agonizing feelings. If I could shut them up, just for a second, then maybe I could stop this catastrophe. But I can't, they're far too much for me. Like I am for her. For anyone.

These constant episodes I keep having, the resulting feuds and grudges that have been building over the last couple of months...they all close in on me now; distilling into this single moment of concentrated, agitated frustration.

I pull back the covers all of a sudden, get out of bed, decide it's better not to take Blazefire with me and walk quite calmly to the lounge. Behind me Fang sits up, hugging her knees about her chest, crying, hard. "So what...? Don't you even love me anymore?!" she wants to know.

I pause in the doorway, I pause for an eternity; when I look back at her, I find such pained eyes staring back at me in this half-light, scared. "I don't feel anything," I answer her truthfully, and close the door on her – and her wretched sobbing.

Pain is a bond of sorts, isn't it? A bond like love, though perhaps more certain. It's all I can do when I hurt my love like that...to find solace in knowing that at the very least, I could share my pain with Fang.

She's probably asleep by now – it never takes her very long to drift off. I should know, considering all those wakeful hours I lay beside her in bed, torturing myself with everything I wanted to do to her but rarely did. I had to be careful when I slept beside her, beside that warm, lustrous, cello-like body. My dreams sometimes made me want to act in ways she might not like and they were oh so influential on me, on my thoughts, and desires. Ever since I shut her out of my life – the last time, I mean – she has come to me in my dreams...in a different way than before. Those dreams serve to light a match in my mind, to amplify passions that I rarely give any credence to and to surprise me to a state of arousal that stops me from having any real thoughts at all...

It was always the same. We would be in a tunnel of sorts – a maze, facing one another as the walls around us burned. Behind me lay an open, snowy landscape – our obvious escape – but somehow she would make me stay here with her...stay here with her wild beauty and the dancing flames. Fang looked so feral, so fearless...so unlike me...so full of dark desire when she looked at me with her blazing eyes, smirked at me, turned and began charging away from me. I never thought about it, I didn't hesitate at all...I just ran after her, somehow feeling it was right...doing as she wanted, doing as her voice inside my head told me to...

"Seduce me, Light...reduce me right...I need you needing me, just like this...exactly like this..."

Never tiring, never tiring...in the dark, I'd chase her heart.

Suddenly, abruptly, I'd come to a dead end and the blazing walls would begin closing in. She'd appear behind me, seemingly out of nowhere, completely uncaring of the impending end, completely uninhibited in her choice of words for me...

"Try to resist, Lightning...but it's just not finished with me yet..." My mind would pause everything whilst I considered that enigma; considered that warm breath on my neck, that unfamiliar restraint behind Fang's words, "a hold too intense...to forget..."

And then I'd shut my eyes on the flames that consumed us, feeling a sudden rush to my head as the scene tipped and up and shifted to me lying on my back; with Fang buried deep inside me, making me burn with the pain of the first time...

Relentless: her passion; unyielding in wielding such power, such control over me. Completing me, depleting me, over, and over and over and over until I'd find myself screaming her name, screaming her god-damned name: "Fang...Fang...!"

"FANG!"

Waking up to reality leaves me bitter and angry – another reason I spend so much of my time asleep. I know how cowardly that makes me sound – but even heroes can't be brave all the time. In my depression I need someone like her, who is strong, who is firm, who won't abandon me in my nightmarish abyss.

And in my mania...fuck...I need her to destroy me...the disgusting creature that I become...

"She just bores me, doesn't make an effort with me. She seemed like my ideal woman but now..." I shrug, shaking off that uncomfortable feeling I get when I talk like this about Fang behind her back. A voice in me tells me that I am not myself, but I turn that down to enjoy this passing thrill I genuinely mistake for a deep, emotional connection with another.

I don't even like Vanille - not that way. She's fun to be with when I feel like this...and oh does she worship everything I say and do. That much has always been obvious to me, and being quietly vain, her interest in me just sends me into a spin, fuelling my unnatural high. I get too excited when our star signs match up and decide I am an augur and can read the mystical omens displayed in the swirling of her drink. It's not long before she is captivated by my passion in all things and she even starts agreeing with me about Fang - about the sister she apparently cares for so much. Whatever.

That unsavoury flavour lingers though, whenever we mention my 'girlfriend'. Convinced it is because I have fallen out of love with her, I decide to steer the conversation away from my commitments to Fang in favour of one of my favourite topics: sex. I stop caring about the promises I made to someone I don't even like right now, and manage to manipulate Vanille into thinking that Hope doesn't know how to please her despite her just telling me otherwise. My rational self does briefly ask to have a word with me, but I ignore it in favour of falling in lust tonight.

Every time Fang calls me, it pisses me off and I refuse to answer. She should just know I don't feel like talking, whether we agreed to speak or not, right? Right. A worthy partner could read my mind like that. That's what I want. Is that so much to ask? All she's doing is trying to hold me back - she's really rather pathetic these days, trying to get my attention like this. Not like Vanille who doesn't seek my approval or care about whether I am happy or not. I bet she'd be obsessed with me after I make her come...

I'm about to express this to her when she excuses herself to go to the restroom. What a horrible time to leave, right before I'm about to seduce the fuck out of her! Whatever, her loss. I order another round and stare at all the gorgeous women around me, allowing my fantasy realm to take a stronghold within my keep. A glance from one becomes a look; a friendly smile becomes a seductive smirk. Before long, I start to feel annoyed at all this wayward attention from these women pretending to care about their partners when they really all just want me, so I stand to leave, throwing some money on the bar and scowl at as many of them as I can, truly believing that I am driving them all wild with desire.

I forget to even wait for Vanille. Honestly she's more of an after thought when I join the taxi rank and begin flirting with someone called Lebreau. She's more my type than Vanille is, anyway, and she didn't make the mistake of leaving me alone to selfishly relieve herself when I was just about to sweep her off her feet.

When my phone vibrates, I guess correctly that it is her calling, whining about me leaving her whilst she was in the restroom, as if I am somehow accountable to her. I never promised her anything. I hate it when people hold me to expectations like this. And that's exactly what I tell this sexy stranger as I turn off my phone, visibly irritated, and ask her what her star sign is...

The aftermath of my highs are almost always immediately followed by a low of unprecedented depth. The guilt of my inexplicable emotional infidelity isn't even the trigger - it only adds to my despair. Sometimes I don't even remember what I did at all, and that makes facing the reality of it all the more difficult. That night had resulted in an explosive argument with Fang, one of the few experiences in my life I can now say that I truly regret. My beautiful, passionate, caring woman...she didn't see my right fist coming, had no feasible way of coping with the heartbreak I was causing...

Or the heartbreak I was feeling; or the rage or the emptiness or the fear. It had all become too overwhelming; it wasn't fun anymore. I wanted so badly to outrun the intensity of these emotions; escape the cold rain of the coming storm. Too lost inside, I couldn't see I was trying to outrun myself. But I ran anyway. I'm good at running.

I worked all day and all night. If I wasn't working, I was training or sleeping. I cut Fang out of my life in every way I could think of: no contact, none at all. It wasn't easy but I told myself I could forget about her and all her unconditional love. I didn't deserve it anyway. I was a monster. I would only keep hurting her because I was so out of control. Serah, Snow, my 'friends'...they couldn't even tell what I was going through: I had become a master of disguise and regularly swung between being grateful that they couldn't perceive my vulnerability and being mildly resentful of the fact that it went ignored. 'Lightning...it flashes bright, then fades away.' None of them really understood what I meant when I said that. None of them looked any deeper than that.

Fang did, Fang cared. But where was she now? What had I driven her to? I ruined the relationship between her and Vanille – I'd killed Vanille and Hope's budding romance by making Vanille think she had a chance with me when all she was was a passing entertainment for me – me and my mania. I managed to alienate half of my circle of my friends...and I had the strong suspicion that Serah and Snow were only sympathetic towards me because they were family. Duty bound.

I can't quite recall the precise moment that I stopped running and let this all catch up to me but I do remember vividly one evening, two months ago, setting Blazefire down underneath my pillow and finding the book she had made for me on one special occasion there, in place. That book, bursting with my soul, my art...the sensitivity that I hide from everyone but Fang...I cried when she gave it to me. I cried again, then, when I rediscovered it, there. I thought I'd tossed all my memories of her in my rage...why I had I kept this? And under my pillow, of all places.

The universe would not let me rest after that; too many 'coincidences' had me questioning what I'd done. The dreams of her became increasingly intense; I was starting to see her everywhere, even though being from Pulse, she looks like no one around this area. Advances from other girls who I'd been grooming before started to annoy me and stress me out and an overwhelming need to just see her, even from a distance had me resorting to this: to coming here, to this spot, every. damn. night.

And so, here I am. Here I will be, for however long it takes. She knows that I am here, waiting to atone; waiting to do more than that – waiting for her permission.

Something is changing, something has changed. A renewed purpose, a renewed love, a renewed strength to fight this. I don't wanna run anymore, keep running in these circles dictated by uncaring Fate. I'm taking a stand, today, right now, for tomorrow, for the rest of my life. I refuse to live a sentence unapproved or overruled by heaven.

I refuse.

My heart knows to whom it belongs and I choose to follow it, no matter how difficult the path.

I won't stop and I won't give in...until I have her... in my arms again.