Sometimes It Has Nothing To Do With Love
=T12=
Sometimes it had nothing to do with love. Sometimes Axel just said, "You need to learn to protect yourself." And hit him. And punched him and burned him and threw him to the ground in the end and said yet again, "You lose." Sometimes he managed to wrench the Keyblades- God, both of them- out of his hands and left him defenseless and took advantage of it. Sometimes Axel just got done with the world again and had to get it out of his head.
And sometimes Roxas wished he'd never loved him, because sometimes the love went away and it left him with a space to fill, and he had to fill it or else he would destroy himself. And that wasn't even the worst part, as if anything could possibly be worse than that neverending cycle of love and discovery, loss and destruction.
Roxas hadn't believed it himself at first. That first time Axel had left him broken and alone, in the darkness within and without, he thought that it could never get lower than this, being hurt and abandoned by the one he'd fought so hard to be able to love.
The next day, Axel had crawled back with his tail down and his guard up, and Roxas hadn't had any say it in whatsoever before the man was in his arms, being forgiven. Because the moment he'd set eyes on his betrayer's face, all the love he'd thought he'd lost came rushing back up inside his head and his chest, stronger and bloodier and more undeniable for all the hate it had to crash its way through to get back out.
Roxas could never explain it properly, why he had to love Axel even when he never wanted to again. Perhaps it was because he'd gone against his own nature for so long to grab hold of what he wanted that now he couldn't let go. What he did know for sure was that he couldn't stop it from happening, over and over falling back in love, and it got more painful every single time.
He was also fully aware, but unwilling to admit, that it would never stop because Axel could never change. The instant his instincts had understood that Roxas would never turn him away, no matter what he did, it was no longer an option for him to control himself. He knew he could get away with anything, and being who and what he was, he could not pass by the opportunity when it was so easily given.
So he yelled and hit, stole from him physically and mentally, hurt and took and walked away and came back when he felt like it. He smiled and loved and lived off Roxas's pain. And so it went, incomplete and unchangeable, through days and days and days of blood and bliss, darkness and light and fire. So much fire.
One day it came to him, in the dying flash of yet another sunset atop their tower of twilight. Pain and pleasure had become the same to him, and meaningless. The only way to change this for himself was to hurt Axel back, but he couldn't because he loved him far too much. And because he loved what hurt him, he had to hurt what loved him back, with that love.
The redhead's hands were slowly, gently, beginning to wander, but Roxas pushed him away and got to his feet. "I'm leaving," he spat, breaking straight through all the walls they'd built up to delude themselves. "I'm leaving and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do to make me change my mind. I'm done being yours, done being anyone's, so I'm getting out of here before you can get around to killing me."
"But Roxas – " Axel started, trying anyway. "No – I – thought – "
"Yeah, what did you think, hmm Axel?" he snarled, because the love was coming back, more powerful than ever before, and he had to fight it. "You have no right to think anything about me, of me, because I don't need you and you- you don't deserve me. But go ahead, tell me what you thought, and if this is just more of your twisted game then I am going to give you what you do deserve and throw myself off the edge just to see your face when you realize it's your fault."
Such a beautiful, tempting idea, escaping all of it forever, all of the scars, all of the wounds, all of the love. But he had to know. He had to have a reason, or it would be for nothing. He felt no fear at the oh so real concept of his own death, no, all he wanted was to make it mean something first. To have actually done something with this life before he went, by going.
Axel's eyes shone and then went so dark they barely looked green. "Roxas," he said, voice and face perfectly composed, and Roxas knew that Axel knew what this was all about. "I thought, once, that I loved you. That's all." He didn't look away, and Roxas didn't think that he was even able to, but he got the sense that Axel was somewhere else entirely inside his own head. The man made a little gesture with his hand toward the empty space around him, something that said, All right, you can go now. I won't stop you.
But Roxas couldn't anymore, because he knew that Axel wasn't lying. There had been a time once when they had truly been in love, but somehow, they'd gotten away from it and lost their way back. It was just one of those things that happens when you want something too much. When you finally get it, it's not quite what you wanted or expected anymore.
And now all he wanted was to forgive Axel, because he'd meant what he'd said for the first time in forever, and because he wasn't trying to stop him and control him. That had been all he'd wanted for so very long. But all that time he'd been trying to rid himself of what he'd won, and now he had finally been able to let go. He hadn't even felt it. Hadn't even been able to say goodbye to everything he'd been.
Instead, he said goodbye to Axel and turned his back on that world forever. And the next time he saw Axel through the eyes of another, trying to let him go even as he became nothing but flame, he could only stop watching and fade away a little bit more. Because sometimes true love requires sacrifice. And sometimes, it has nothing to do with love, and all you do is save yourself.
Fin.