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“You deserve this.”
“Do I?”
His Natsumi is smart. She is perfect. She is wonderful. She is his his his. So of course she doesn’t let many near him. After all, he’s learned to have a way with words. Of course he has, so much less threatening if his smile is soft and kind, his voice is gentle and caring, his words are precise and seemingly so true.
Power comes in so many forms, and one is manipulation.
The exception, of course, is Tackle.
He hates this woman. Hates her powers, hates her strength, hates the way his Natsumi smiles at her like she only ever had to him, before.
(And when she spoke of Kureshima Chinatsu, but that woman is long dead. He could never be mad at someone who died to do something his Natsumi was happy with. He could never be mad at someone who gave his Natsumi the right kind of hope.)
Axesuke hates her, and yet he admires her. Tackle is confident as she is beautiful as she is stupidly heroic. He’s come very close to killing her, but never too close. It would hurt his Natsumi so.
But she’s also come very close to killing him. Not that it matters. He no longer has reason to truly fear death.
The shackles were gone from his mind, with Kuuga in his body. Even now, even tied up, even hating it, and scared, oh so scared, my Natsumi, my love, please let me free. Don’t you see how this kills me?
(And now, rather routinely, she visits him here.)
“When my… my Shigeru died,” Tackle says, snapping him from his internal rambling. “It was me who killed him. And it hurt. It will always hurt. But I did it for the good of my World. And now you have done even worse than he ever did, but Nacchan won’t kill you.”
“Do you think that makes me lucky?” Axesuke asks. Tackle shrugs.
“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know.”
Axesuke laughs.
“But of course, your lover was weak,” he says. “He questioned reality until he broke. I was already twisted, I just chose to do what was right for me. And my Natsumi chose to fight me.”
“She isn’t yours. ”
“Yes, she is,” Axesuke says. “She is my better half. My enemy. My equal. And then there’s you, here to ruin it all. If you hadn’t come, I could have made her see. I could have fixed her , and the World would be ours.”
But instead, he’s here. Chained up. Natsumi really was smart as she was cruel, chaining him up like this. He has to fight to stay here, in the present. He couldn’t do it at all, at first. Except when she was here. His Natsumi. My love you keep me here you keep me sane except I am not sane, I am twisted, do not leave me here—
Tackle walks towards him.
“There are no cameras in here,” she says. Axesuke doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t. He is not scared anymore.
(He is chained, and he is fighting every moment to be here, in the present. He is trying. )
“Do what you want,” Axesuke says. Tackle pulls him up by his shirt and shoves him against the wall, spinning into a kick.
“You’re a fucking monster,” she says. “You use people.” He falls. She doesn’t stop. “You only care about yourself.” He’s not here he’s not here he’s— “and you don’t even feel bad. ” He thinks he might have hit his head. He laughs. “Do you even have a fucking soul?”
Axesuke looks up at her, as she pauses.
“Of course I don’t,” he says. “Does anyone?”
“Not even Natsumi?” Tackle replies. Axesuke grins.
(His Natsumi is how he stays sane, after all.)
“My Natsumi is special and you fucking know it,” he says. “Her damn twin is why I’m here.”
This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. Neither tell Natsumi. She is too good to understand how her two loves despise each other. It’s not jealousy. That’s far too simple. Yuriko hates him for being a monster. Axesuke hates her for giving Natsumi false hope.
(They both know they mean everything to Natsumi, and cannot figure out what to do with that)
But she can scare him for moments only.
He can no longer die.
Tackle glares.
“There is no saving you, is there?” She asks. “You regret nothing. ”
“I regret not killing you.”
She beats him till he dies, and all Axesuke can do is laugh.