Hello all. This is the weirdest story I've come up with yet I'm certain. DPshadow I agree, the sweet Akito is better but seeing him with sadistic tendencies is incredibly amusing. The joke is after a point I can't tell who's talking in this one. For this story I blame Digimon Frontier and Loveless because honestly, what else brings up this stuff? This was written at one AM so what can you do?

Anyway...

Title: Necessity

Rating: T

Genre: Friendship/Romance/Angst

Warnings: OOC of our favorite blunette, implied onesided OCxAkito (only if you really want it implied), more likely OCxOC, mentions of death and violence and the use of the word sex

Summary: Once again, they simply were. And that was enough. Lightly crossed over with Digimon. One of three

Quick note: Akito and Agito are Levi before I get complaints on that.

Fragmented

10. Necessity

Your feelings were mixed for most of the day. Your minds kept slipping between human and… that other. That digital. The place that you two had been one person again, but not you, not the past, someone different, stable. Like the earth that sang in your ears stronger than the gems that the former King called infallible.

He was wrong, the gem is nothing compared to the land's song. The gem is a statistic, but the earth is an instinct.

You remembered vivid dreams of fire and blood, of slicing through data made flesh and watching it spin, writhe, escape from them with the safety of death. And that voice, the voice that breathed truth and certainty and safety, always calling to you, calling that name that was no longer a nickname, was even stronger than sight, so alive and so real that you saw him alive and well every time your eyes shut.

In that place where war seemed like a game, the losses piled higher and higher than the slot machines could have predicted. War was statistics that were easily rectified, the players could revive their dead soldiers but the heroes always died in one way or another.

So when you bumped into him, abruptly sliding back into humanity's skin with a shudder (because really, were you human anymore? It was a doubt mixed with time and changes of heart and memory) and brief pain, you were both angry, the younger much harsher than the older. You had been so close to there again, close to the border that was a simple line to step over. But then they had seen him.

No, he isn't real. He can't be real because he fell. He can't be real because I couldn't protect him and he died!

It's so easy for you, seeing this illusion of him (because he had to be, you saw him break and die, you felt him) to slip into one again, to slip into using "I". The doppelganger didn't recognize you, not immediately. Then, you saw it, the light in his violet, the love, the pure ecstasy and he opened his mouth to speak. You were sure he was going to have that voice, that same warmth of only five years ago. Only five years of despair and loneliness masked by dependency and betrayal. When the most comfort was found in a warzone and being surrounded constantly by scarred people

And you forced yourself up and ran. You fled from the past, the present, and your own worth and ran towards the guilt that made failures vivid and true to you. You fled towards the darkness that always sang so sweetly. (But it was not the dragon's song, never its song. That was a song you had no right to hear again.)

The earth doesn't bend; it breaks.

And you were broken. You both broke in half so long ago that when the merging happened over and over again you allowed it because the breaking never went away but it was nice when it hid itself for a while. You ran and you cried and you tore off that stupid eyepatch (which neither of you understood having because it prevented that true power from coming out and that certainty that someone was always there) and let it drop, forgotten. Was that water on your face? Oh no because fire went out in water and dragons didn't belong in it no. They couldn't last in it. It was why that person and his love had never gotten along well. Fire and water were opposites, desperate to clash, more so than earth and fire and steel and water because earth and steel were even sort of people. But why did it matter if the dragon was dead and not here and you had just imagined it?

Dragons don't die from a fall. They soar up on injured wings and roast their enemies.

Does that make him real? Your older half asked this in that familiar shattered voice that you fear. You didn't know and you didn't want to know. You were scared because if he was he might come and roast you for failing, for being a worthless monster, for doing as you were bid and killing your master by letting go of the dragon. So you didn't answer, your other half didn't repeat himself, feeling the same mixed-up pain you were (because you were the same in the end, you just have the opposite temper ablaze) and you kept running. You fled toward the earth, toward the song of serenity and understanding. The earth would swallow you up and absorb all these feelings and then move on because the earth changed and adapted and grew.

The meadow you reach is lackluster and pained. The rain has lowered them, all so the water could nourish and rebirth it all. That was where you can run no longer and you collapsed, rocking back and forth amidst the rain and shadows and the earth's melody. You continued to slip back and forth between real and virtual, human and monster, all while denying and calling to that dragon, the dragon who always commanded yet requested, who loved and hated his enemies to the point of obsession, who dreamed sweetly and cruelly all at once.

Antithesis and interchangeable, that was what we all were in the end, these pairs of human which were not meant to be, who killed and healed with equal measure.

And you screamed. You screamed and sobbed and swung furious fists at the air because he could not be here, he just couldn't. It defied all truths he had seen and awoke so many worries and fears and emotions that you two couldn't understand or want again. Oh but that was a lie, you wanted him. You wanted him back for more than love or safety, you wanted his acceptance. You wanted him to be there and see you as that shattered little thing that was doing his best to glue the crystals back together and to help you pick them up because he knew. He knew you every way just as you knew him. All of his anxieties, all of his pains and loves and fears that you could just take away from him with a few simple words that passed from partner to partner:

"Everything will work out."

But that wasn't true either. It hadn't when he fell into the darkness, that place you could never go without the brokenness becoming visible (which you had to avoid, because if it came outside of them the glue would dissolve and you would never be able to fix yourself). And it wasn't true during that time where you and he were lost in the wild and separated, a time where you felt little and struck first. And it couldn't be true now because nothing worked out in this place of uncertainty, this human earth. Nothing but death worked out.

Fire cannot scorch earth, for it repairs itself and grows, stronger than when it died.

His voice floated out towards you, piercing your chest worse than bullets or blades. "Levi, where are you?" You wanted him to stay away so you stayed silent, kept still, muffling the anxious noises and squashing the strong urge to run into his arms and cry like a baby because he would let you and he would say things you weren't sure you understood just yet.

The dragon found you two huddled on the grass. Even though you couldn't see it you imagined his face, ashen and concerned, eyes wide and his whole body twitching to come to your side. But he stayed back and that's good, that's a great idea because the past and present weren't supposed to connect that way.

"Levi, I'm home." You heard them, the words he was so terrified to say aloud, the phrases that were reflected in you remained unspoken. "It took a long time, but I'm back."

Pleading hoarsely, you asked without turning, "Are you real?"

The answer was unfaltering and so utterly him. "If I wasn't I would be a fake. No one can fake me."

"Prove it." There was only one way to make it true. And he did just that..

He was there, strong and warm, his natural fire around him like a shield. His arms were snug around your thin shivering body (which you didn't notice, in all the confusion inside you). He pulled you back, into his lap, as smoothly as he always had. You felt it, his faint trembling, his shuddering pain and knowledge (he couldn't believe it either, he didn't think this would ever happen again).

And his voice, which you longed for yet feared, whispered, "I'm sorry Levi. I didn't want to…" He ran out of his words and simply buried himself in your hair. He was crying, which was something he knew was safe to do now when the worlds were not staring and searching for heroes. Something you knew you should scold him for and yet could not bring yourself to bother.

Just like that, it was gone. The turmoil that had shattered you two like an earthquake faded and all you could do was let go into one and sink so willingly back into this person's hold. And you smiled and cried in that gentle way that you knew he loved about you. More than he loved water, your dragon loved you for denying your own shattered self to keep him as that whole person everyone knew. As of then, you were his in the old way, the way that was right for them as the two worlds dictated. But it wasn't true. Not yet.

And to be that true way took pain. It took retaking the contract. It took binding yourself to the worlds for a second time You were willing. It would be a light thing, compared to before, compared to the agony of losing your being. But if he wasn't, well, that ended the discussion. You obeyed his every heart's wish before, you would do so again without hesitation.

So when he pulled away from you, when he turned you around to face him, you wondered how you could have thought he wasn't real. Everything about him is more vivid than your longing foolish dreams. His eyes, those vivid violet orbs that spoke of tension too great for one to bear were full of that happiness that words never found the right way to express. He loved you differently than his the child of water, but it was love nonetheless, for the little you knew on the subject.

"Levi, I…" And he stopped again. He didn't want to ask you this, not again. Not after he had broken you and the entire team up and left you to desperately pull yourselves back into that state of previous existence that was anguishing. But you didn't care and simply rest your head under his chin and sighed as the rain continues to pour on your heads.

"If it will make you stay," you said with a pleading sort of air, knowing how foolishly dependant you sound, how weak others would think you. "If it will help the others, if it will save you," You remembered the words, the words that had begun your journey as partners in the digital world and repeated them.

"If that is your will Hakuto-sama, then we will fulfill it until we die."

He was sad that you were so willing, so accepting of the role of a soldier you shouldn't have been. But he knew you have always been so, even when things were simpler. So he smiled that sad smile that guided you to victory and nodded, holding out his palms toward yours. You placed your hands over his and your last coherent thought is how much smaller you are.

And then all that remained was the fire. A dragon was roaring inside you, searing your veins as it searches for the beast, the fangs, which curled up so deep in your chest from disuse. And the fire blazed with a phoenix's touch and you continued to burn, gasping and never feeling more alive than as you did now.

Was a contract like having sex, connecting a part of yourself so deep and so fragile that the strong bond making itself known was a chain with weak links? Was this partnership called love or was it simply just how it should have been for human and digimon but had been changed for them?

You couldn't feel the rain anymore or see the sky. There was nothing but the fire and the firm steadiness of the earth's relentless drums at your feet. The world and fire began to trickle away and you knew that just as five years ago had been, now you were the servant, the one who would obey his master's heart in a way no other could, all for the sake of protecting.

Once again, things were not good or bad. Once again, they simply were. And that was enough.