bypassing maps

He lost himself the same day he lost her to the desert.

He might have been the one to throw her over the balcony, to expel her from Hueco Mundo, but he'd thought it would bring him victory. By the time she returned, he'd be stronger. But when he looked over the rail at her broken body, returning to child state, there was no success behind the gloating on his face.

He thought he'd succeed in winning. All he'd done was lose her.

(si elle n'existe pas, il n'exist pas)

He couldn't ever kill her because she'd kill him in her dying. They were Nnoitra-and-Neliel Nel-and-Nnoitra and their entire existences depended on the other. Building so much into each other would leave them alone nothing and Nnoitra knew her death would be his.

He wasn't afraid of dying, not ever, not when he struck against her and not when he gave those futile orders that she finish him. And it wasn't that she was stronger than he was – true even if he wouldn't admit it – because when her mask ripped right open for Santa Teresa he felt that frail buzz where she could have died.

It was always a given that she would kill him, whether she did it with her own blade or just by removing herself so that he could no longer exist. One day he knew she'd come back and so even though she was gone he was still there because they were Nnoitra-and-Neliel Nel-and-Nnoitra and she still needed to come back so he could prove he was stronger and then she could kill him.

Because he would never allow Neliel to kill him on her own terms, and that was why he could not kill her. They'd ceased to be two separate beings, and without her he'd die – without him, so would she. But she could not have her pacifist ending, murdering him in the extinguishing of her own life force because she did not want to kill him and that was why she had to.

She would return and he would be stronger, and then she would have to kill him because she would have to know, as she died too, that she was just as much a beast.

(parce qu'il besoin lui detester)

And he told himself that thought made him happy or content or whatever scrap of feeling he could snatch and he refused to look closely because he'd been wandering lost without her.

(ici, personne n'est content)

Where he'd once been violent for her, to see that twisting of disgust on her face and to hunt for the stabs of pleasure under it because even she couldn't always totally hide those primal screams in her, he was now violent to take her place.

At every moment they'd carried a kind of hungering anger, but with Nnoitra-and-Neliel foundlost and Nel-and-Nnoitra desert-lost he was just hungry. He didn't think it but he knew it without thinking because his existence was so closely wrapped in hers all he could do was fight and wait without her.

He'd fought at every moment with her –killed for her, lost to her, beaten her the only way he could.

Pressed up against a wall, biting as much as kissing, her nails savage and something palpable between them. It hadn't been rape, no, not quite, because even as she fought him she didn't fight him off, but it was something bruising and shattering and at the end of it he still needed her to kill him and they rejected convention because it wasn't about the sex.

No, it was about the fighting and the anger and the deep need to feel. It was about strands of green hair in the bleeding furrows on his chest and the bruises he could at least take pleasure in when she forced him to the ground without any. In one way he could make her weaker and that wasn't enough for him because she was Nel-and-Nnoitra and the Nnoitra part always seemed to come last when Nel was so unassailable.

He didn't just need to hurt her. He needed to tear her apart. And something behind her eyes needed to wreck him too.

(elle doit le tuer)

Without her he was a draining emptiness all the blood in the world couldn't seem to fill.

(demain est le meme d'aujourd'hui)

And when she came back he was furious because she was a child and he had no need of a child. A child was just Nel, not Nel-and-Nnoitra, and he was still waiting for Nnoitra-and-Neliel Nel-and-Nnoitra because the point of both of them living was to die.

(il tue donc il est)

Once again she wouldn't kill him and he still couldn't help but hate her for it.

Because he'd lost himself to Neliel and her to a child and they'd both gotten horribly left in a desert and for the first time he wondered whether they'd ever be found.

(elle ne peux existe pas sans il)

His eyes meet hers in the final moments of his life. She hasn't killed him, and he sees in her, maybe for the first time, that when he cut her mask, reduced her to what she is, he set her free. He'd never intended to free her, never meant to save her. He wanted to drag her down with him.

But when he looks at her he doesn't regret it. He wants to. He wishes with a pain much worse than this wound that he could wish he hadn't set her free, because they are Nnoitra-and-Neliel Nel-and-Nnoitra and she should have been as stranded as he.

And she says his name in that last time they see each other and he knows because he's dying and she's going to die too. They are Nnoitra-and-Neliel Nel-and-Nnoitra and there isn't one of them without the other because they long ago wove their purposes together. And maybe in them both dying they can both go free.

Because they will always be Nnoitra-and-Neliel Nel-and-Nnoitra. Because they're both fated to die.

He's already ceased to be lost.

i hope i pulled this off, because NnoiNel is not exactly easy to write but i was inspired by Dictionary Ink and then they got in my head. go read her stuff, it's a zillion times better than mine. i appreciate reviews. thanks for reading!