Love/Hate (Lemon GarouxReader 🍋)

Deliverance - Part 1

Author's note: 

I'm following the original web comic (which is very different from the manga) with my own twists and turns! ^.^

T/W: violence, blood, mild gore

~*~

There is complete, overwhelming darkness. A suffocating, deafening silence.
A nothingness.
Formless and empty.
Completely still until it is pierced by a sharp, terrifying gasp.
A creation coming to life.
The first breath burns his chest as Garou feels his lungs expand again, as if a baptism of fire.
How long has death lasted this time?
Has he been gone for seconds, minutes, hours, days...?
When he opens his eyes, what world will he find?
Perhaps it has been decades, centuries, and this will be a world he no longer recognises.
Time ceases to exist when his soul is pulled under into that black abyss.
His soul...

His mind is still collecting itself, pulling the pieces, the memories back together but something feels different.
His eyes open. And he finds himself in darkness still. Those same rocks pinning him down, as if standing guard over him.
He cannot see beyond this stony prison, his face inches from the ground under its weight.
His body feels battered, bruised, broken and he does not like this.
Usually, coming out of this supernatural coma leaves him feeling somehow reborn. Body renewed. But this feels ominously different.
He cannot stay here.
Braces his hands against the cold, broken earth, pushes himself up through gritted teeth and clenched jaw. If it's the last thing he'll do...
The pile of broken boulders rocks a little, rumbles before finally collapsing, falling aside as Garou lifts himself out of his makeshift tomb, black bandages streaming in the cold wind.
He stands bent over, feeling a weariness so great it may bring him to his knees.
His hand travels over his body, prodding, checking. It feels...unusual.
His hand feels strange, his body feels strange.
The bandages he had woken up in seem not just to stick, glued with blood, to his chest, his shoulders, his thighs but meld with his skin, become an organic part of him.
He finds he can barely breathe.
It's as if his body is no longer obeying him.

Is this it?
Was the promise of more strength and more omnipotence with each death false? Had his body reached its limit?
No. This couldn't be the end. He had not made them pay yet.
The insane rage still sears through him. He can't rest until each and every hero is made to taste the horror of their own death, a horror that could only be a fraction of what he himself felt at the loss of Ryo, Tareo, of you...
His fury burns but his body will not yield.
He forces himself to take steps in the shimmering moonlight, sounds of terror and destruction not far off. A battle he should be part of. A battle he should be the victor of.

He does not get far before he finds himself sinking to the ground again, unable to hold himself up, laying back against the cool, smooth rock.
He stares up at the sky but finds he can barely see. The moon, the stars are far too pretty for what lies below, for the wasteland he finds himself in.

Is this it?
Did this body fail him after all? So frail and so human?
In the end, was he just a human who could go no further? Pitiful and weak...
His only desire was to become the strongest, most ruthless monster. He was sure he would be able to achieve that. He had never been so sure of anything in his life.
Anything until that night. That night that started out with nightmares and ended in a frightening, silent self-confession. Its insistence so overwhelming and powerful he could not even begin to argue with it: he loves you.
The only two things he had been sure of in his life.
And the two things he could never reconcile. A choice he had put off making until it had been completely taken out of his hands and made for him.
And now, even this path was failing him.
He had felt powerful, an exponential evolution of his strength, his skill, right up until this most recent resurrection.
His hands clench into fists, feeling trapped in his own body, a willing, murderous spirit let down by his flesh.