[Square Enix] i have loved you for 1,000 years.
Series: Square Enix. OCs.
Word Count: 755.
Characters/Pairings: Roxas/OC.
Notes: i say it's Roxas/OC and yet I never mention names, and it's such a radical AU that it's nearly impossible to tell it's them. but. still. in my head, it's Roxas and the same OC as was in a previous drabble, and a previous prose poem. that probably needs a lot of editing. don't go look for it.
Summary: through lifetimes, you love a man who is always ripped away from you. the cycle of reincarnation never breaks.
since the beginning of your existence, you've been in love with one man. one with clear eyes and hair that never lies flat, no matter the time period. every lifetime, you love him and his honesty. you are reborn, and you love him still, more desperately, and every lifetime, you lose him horribly.
the first time you meet him, you are five years old, and it's improper to show your ankles in public. you are both dirty and scowling, but only you are scolded for it (--women have a duty, you know, darling, your mother says, scrubbing your face, shooing you to change into your dress, and you hate duties, you hate him, his white teeth and how he got to play outside in the woods). in this lifetime, he tips his hat to you from across a ballroom when you're sixteen and your heart flutters from something other than how tight your dress is, and he takes your hand to dance, and you're married the following spring. he dies of illness not ten years later.
the second time, you don't remember how you met, but he was trampled by a horse; the third time you met on the street, casual, and never became friends, the fourth, you meet through a mutual friend, and despite his being married, you fall in love and let him have you because you don't know how to live without him; the fifth time, the sixth, the seventh and eighth, and you lose count. decades pass, and sometimes you follow him when he goes, sometimes you live to old age, sometimes you leave before he has the chance to.
sometimes you don't find him, or you don't remember. those are the lifetimes that offer some relief. and yet, the lifetimes you do find him, the few years you spend with him, you love him enough to think you'll go insane (once or twice, perhaps more, you do), and it's the worst when he loves you, too, as desperate and fierce as the first time you knew each other--but he never remembers.
(he smiles when he opens the door for you, 1985, to a cafe in San Francisco; you have only three years with him before he's killed by a drunk driver in Los Angeles, and you throw yourself off a bridge, because you've lost track of how many times you've lost him, stopped trying to count after 20 since the 1600s, god knows exactly when, so long ago.)
2012, he asks if the seat beside you in a movie theater is taken, and then asks if you'd get something to eat with him after you spend the two hours speaking commentary to each other, and you almost want to say no, but you never can, because you love him right down to your very DNA. it only takes five months for half of your closet to be his clothes, and he sleeps over almost every night, and you can't sleep because any night could be the last time you see him. he is beautiful and rested, whole and he loves you, achingly, the way you speak without restraint and wear your hair long, tangled, and the way your heartbeat stutters in the hollow of your throat when he kisses you, all these years and lifetimes later.
you have ten years this time, ten years you can lie with him and look at his photography, listen to his ranting, kiss him and dig your nails into his shoulders, hear his breathing at night and cry knowing he's still there. you relax. maybe, you think, this time, it's over. maybe he'll be allowed to live. you've been good, you think you have, but you don't even know what that means, because you never did anything to spark this in the first place--and when he's shot and mugged coming home from a photoshoot, you don't feel a thing when the police find him and call you. you swallow as many sleeping pills as you can and lay down on your side of the bed, looking at the wall, and imagine him watching your back, his soft breathing, and think, next time, i don't want to see him.
nothing ever changes.
(you love him and love him and it's impossible to avoid. you suffer and your soul is fragile, but you love him and his sarcastic charm, the way he never holds you like you could break, and you know no one could ever replace him. centuries have taught you that.)