Lucilfer (ChrolloxReader)

Chapter 78

Everything changed. Nothing was easy anymore—not that it necessarily had been easy or even simple in the slightest degree beforehand, but it was so unfair. I hadn't asked for this, for his affections or his attention, and I'd given so many signs, be them subconscious or minuscule, that I was not to be trusted, that I wished he wouldn't trust me, that he should run far away from me and never turn back, because his fate, when twined with mine, was one-sided and led only to death, to a cruel and ironic end.

I'd wanted to restore his passion, to restore his satisfaction of life and help him to find at least some happiness before I ultimately destroyed all of what was left of his frail character, but not like this—not like false hope and foolish dreams and the farce of what appeared to him to be absolute belonging. Had he not read any of what I projected? Perhaps he was more self-absorbed than I thought, but instead of this self-absorption making him to be entirely self-serving, it forced him to care about his friends and those he truly trusted through the lens of his own experience, to ignore any warnings, or to just acknowledge them before shoving them aside.

But I'd known as much, hadn't I? There were signs that he'd sent to me. Had I, too, chosen to ignore them? I'd recognized the glint in his eyes, the restriction in his movements, the moments when his short temper and impulsiveness would subside to reveal something more infinitely patient underneath, something endless and wistfully yearning. I'd recognized it, because I'd seen those visible emotions before, be them more muted, yet less thrown off by the infection of rage and vengeance, and because I'd experienced those feelings, myself.

I didn't want this; I didn't want him. But the blissful ignorance in his gaze and the reckless way he threw himself towards me was a sorrowful expectation I couldn't fulfill. There was an idea he'd built of me, of who I was to him and of what I could be to him, in his mind that he had grown attached to, but I didn't want to believe it. In fact, I still found myself denying that he truly loved me, that those words would ever come from his mouth honestly. What an atrocious vice those words could become when they were spoken by a friend.

There were several different types of love, I'd come to realize—there was the romantic, soul-tying sensation of absolute belonging, and there was the platonic, content sensation of friendship or kinship. The latter held none of the expectations I saw when I looked up into Kurapika's determined eyes, ones which burned with unfiltered desires, yielding to what was, to what he finally admitted. But I didn't want to think of it as an admission; I wanted to see it as a misconception, a mistake. Perhaps he was confusing the emotion of vulnerability, of trust, with the action of the former, of sincere, boundless love.

I hadn't really wished for this to be easy, to be simple. Of course, some innate, pleading part of me often did, but logically, I knew it never would be. It couldn't possibly be easy for me to develop a friendship with Kurapika, to see his side of every trauma he suffered with, to see the way it tore him to microscopic shreds, and watch him flicker out into the arms of death by the means of the very one he'd made his mission to obliterate. And even if he were to complete such a mission, from his perspective, I could still see how solemn and hopeless the circumstances seemed. But again, in his mind, at least he would have completed the one passion he lusted after, though it would leave him with nothing.

Because no one can give back what he's lost.

If I were to water things down to one desire, apart from the self-hatred and self-blaming, all he wanted, for so long, was to avenge his ruthlessly slaughtered family. I couldn't hate him for that, although it pointed him in the direction of Chrollo. But now, there was this, a separate desire and one which never truly held an end point, a place where the goal is completed.

Hatred and anger were very much alive, and often did live past that completion of revenge, but that revenge would, should mark a time of peace for the one afflicted; love, on the other hand, was as eternal and as scorching as flame, as the deepest trenches of hell or the highest peaks of heaven. It didn't die out, or ease with the progression of the days, if it was authentic and genuine. It continued on infinitely, even if the focal point of those sensations were to reject the lover and leave them broken beyond repair. If it was authentic, there would always be love in the heart of the lover.