#that if taiga deteriorated romeo wouldn't have the morals to think it's wrong to stay with him he'd just take advantage of him

[danieyells]

Taiga's mental deterioration is awful. It's terrible. To lose parts of oneself, for Romeo to lose parts of someone he loves so dearly, it's painful and terrifying and if he could make a wish with another demon he might just wish for him to be healed. He was never normal in the time that he knew him. But once upon a time Taiga spoke and looked around the world with coherency, Taiga took interest in things beyond hunger and sporadic, violent fascination. Once upon a time Taiga did more than eat and gamble and sleep in a cycle that he sometimes was very aware of.

And yet.

And yet one of the things Taiga never seemed to forget was Romeo himself. Others' faces and names faded away or never told hold to begin with, other parts of his life were gone to the neverending hunger within him, but Lulu, Lulu remained. If Taiga heard Romeo's name, even without his nickname, there was never any question who he was. His face was always as beautiful as he last saw him. His voice was always so loud and he always said too much. He was as naïve as the day they met and as greedy as he'd ever been. Taiga knew Romeo. He always knew Romeo.

It was awful, in his eyes. That whoever Taiga has been before he met him had been washed away. That Taiga could barely remember who he was and where he'd come from and what brought him joy beyond risk and profit and blood in his mouth and the presence of someone who'd stayed with him so long that Romeo used to wonder if no one had ever done so before.

And yet.

Romeo had always been a greedy bastard. No one knew that like Taiga did.

And as much as he hated to see Taiga fade into something almost beastial, the part of him he buried down tight, the part of him which would have rather cling to valuables even if they would get him killed, the vicious, hungering greed watched on with delight.

The greed held its hand out to this slowly forming monster to be sniffed and remembered and relied on and loved and wanted and needed and to be the only thing left in his head.

Part of him saw Taiga forget everything but remember him with such clarity it was as if Romeo's existence was his own and wished he could help him tear everything else away. Faster, forget faster. Forget more. Care about less.

Until all that Taiga knew or saw or desired or remembered or lived for what Romeo Scorpius Lucci.

Isn't it what he deserved? And isn't it what would make Taiga happy, too?

It was inevitable, as he saw it.

It was inevitable, as Taiga had told him he would never, ever forget him.

If Taiga ever forgot Romeo, what would be left would simply not be Taiga, and Romeo should take it out.

Perhaps Taiga had meant it as a warning, for fear that he would harm Romeo if he ever forgot his face. He had trained him to be able to hold a gun to him, to be ready to pull the trigger in case there was no recognition in Taiga's eyes and he bore teeth at him. To shoot for his heart. To think he should protect himself from whatever took over and used Taiga's face to threaten Romeo's wellbeing.

But to Romeo it was something more. Not about what would become of Taiga but who he was now.

Romeo mourned every memory and thought Taiga lost. Even if Taiga didn't care to do so, every lost bit of someone he loved so dearly was worth mourning.

And yet he watched. Closely. What was left. How much was left. How much was him--and how much was not--and how much would still be him in the end.

Someday, perhaps, if they could not reverse what had become of Taiga's mind, all that would be left for him would be Romeo. And perhaps to continue to love him and to hold him would be to take advantage of that.

But Romeo had killed and stolen and manipulated and more. He was not a man of morals, but of profits and a great deal of sickening, clawing love in the form of greed.

Perhaps someday Taiga would become empty of anything but Romeo, and Romeo would hold him and care for him and love him regardless, in spite of it, for it. Why shouldn't he love someone who thought only of him and felt only for him, whose heart beat and mind buzzed and body moved for him and nothing else? Even if Taiga's sense of self eroded, if his sense of Romeo remained what was not to be loved?

Perhaps after that he would begin to forget Romeo as well. And until then Romeo would love him and use him. Until then he was still valuable. Until then he was still Taiga.

Until he was no longer Taiga, who lived for Romeo according to the greed that made his love into a room full of gilded cages, Romeo would keep him for himself.

And the moment he stopped being Taiga would be when Romeo's heart truly broke.

And what choice would he have, before he lost more attachment to the one person who would attached to nothing but him, to use the gift he'd been given?

That attachment would be so strong, that love so intense, that there wouldn't be blood or gore or anything at all.

There wouldn't even be a world left to mourn Taiga or Romeo or to suffer an existence without them. That love, that passion, would be enough to end everything there ever was or would be in this world. Or maybe that was just Romeo's delightful fantasy, that the world would be reduced to rubble shooting off in a million brilliant directions in space because he simply loved one idiot too much.

One idiot who loved him too much.

If not for him. None of this would have ever happened. He followed Taiga to Darkwick and if he had any direction when they left he would follow him in that direction too.

And if Taiga died, who would he be if he didn't go with him?

And Romeo, in all of his greed, would simply have to take everything with them.

Everything.