A Million on his Soul | Valerian x Laureline

A million on his soul

The most difficult thing for him to do wasn't to love her.

He already was stupidly in love with her; the extend of it he realized time and time again: he would die for her without hesitance, her wellbeing was of utmost importance to him and at times even more important than his own (probably).

There was no part of her that he did not find attractive (yes, even the part which tended to infuriate him at times).
He vividly remembered the first meeting - again, another one of his sergeants had left; good riddance, as they weren't important to him anyway - and of course her beauty was what he noticed first; however, the moment she didn't fall for his flirting and continued to determinedly stare him in the eyes told him everything he had to know about her character - and in that instant, he was lost.

There would be no other person in this galaxy who he would want and admire more.

(Not even himself, but he was not ready to admit that to himself at the time.)

And although she did tire him out sometimes with her ways - it wouldn't hurt her to listen to him at least sometimes - he secretly had to admit that this was the exact reason she was the one.

She never backed down from a challenge, didn't let herself be overpowered by someone else (decidedly not a man) and she always knew with absolute certainty what she wanted.

He wanted, no needed, her to want him.

In hindsight, it was hilarious to think that he became more selfless the moment he realized this.
In fact, he had been more egotistical than ever.

You cannot try and trap an independent mind under the glass of false, belitteling protection.
Every time he told her to stay back, he selfishly did this to be sure she wouldn't be harmed. He knew she could defend herself, better than he could, too, but if she died in combat, who was there he could hold on to?

Even if she didn't want him, her sole existence, her nonserious teases when he overdid his flirting again, and her help when he was overwhelmed with the task at hand soon were crucial to uphold his mental stability.

She was the lifeline he never knew he needed - by the stars above, somedays he didn't even know if he wanted to be with her or actually be her.

She always seemed so assured, so confident - as if she was mocking him with something he could never be - because ultimately, under all his protective layers, it was just this confidence that he lacked.

He was a soldier, he followed rules: the orders of his higher ranked officers, the unspoken hierarchy of the military - and the rules of the image he carefully crafted around himself.

To show what he really felt ought to be his ruin.
To do what was asked, what was expected of him - that was safe, that he could control.

He could not control Laureline.

Thus, when he started working with her, he instantly knew that she was going to last longer than all the sergeants before her.

For her, he would say anything she needed to hear - or at least what he thought she wanted to hear - to get her to look at him, to truly look past the layers of his playboy persona and somehow, miraculously see him.
The possibility of that to happen scared him to death.

Sometimes he even doubted that this last, real part of him still existed.

He probably already lost it in between the tracks of his playlist, the conquests he conveniently laid out to always mock him in his inability to be alone.

When he turned Alpha upside down on his search for her, his desperation to find her, his fear of losing her was finally let loose and let to a restless panic simmering dangerously right below the surface, until he, finally, could be sure that she was safe.

He was so relieved he could have kissed her right on the spot; even his immense fear of freeing himself from his own shackles seemed laughably small in that moment.

Ironic, how he, desperately clinging to the last shreds of his self control, realized that he lost just that a long time ago - that he never really posessed it in the first place.

She could never know the effect she had on him - and at the same time he was almost sure: she had already known.

She was just patiently waiting for him to realize it too - in hopes that he would eventually come to terms with it on his own.

Maybe he needed the lesson of losing her to pathetically prove to himself that he still had it in him, still was above the situation.

He didn't even believe his own lies anymore.

He always tore through people, through sexual escapades and himself, as if he was running away, as if there was a bounty on his head, a million on his soul, issued by noone but himself.

And he was tired of running.

>> That's why i don't want to marry you, because you really don't know what love is. <<

What was this love for anyway if it couldn't erase the continuously bleeding wounds of his mind?

>> Oh come on, this has nothing to do with love - <<

>> - and that's where you're wrong. <<

He let go.

The moment you know your opposite well enough to hold their deepest desires in your hands with the power to destroy them: then, you can truly empathize with them, and only then you can truly know love.

When Laureline asked him to trust her, it wasn't about returning the converter. It wasn't even about the Pearls in general - it was about him trusting her not to hurt him.

His crippling fear of being vulnerable, his wounds and scars laid out in the open for everyone to see, to judge, to tear him apart - she had known about them, had always looked right through him.

To be loved, to be trusted, means giving the other the leverage to hurt you - but the fatal blow never comes.

And against every social reasoning, against your own instinct - loving someone is not grand gestures, open declarations or undying oaths:
it is entirely anticlimactic.

It's inner peace.

And finally, it does not mean flying to the most beautiful beach in the entire universe as major and sergeant or as two lost souls desperately clinging to each other in order not to lose themselves -

it means to embark on this galactic journey together:

as equals.