Yesterdays | Slaxl ❦

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In 'A Tale of Two Cities', Sydney Carton tells Lucie Manette, "I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul," and she requests of him to try again, to think again, for she had wallowed in the belief of causing him great unhappiness. But Carton devotes himself to this grandiose idea that she is all he deserves, that this extraneous feeling of want and desire shines through her eyes and scours for him alone.

Axl ponders where his love for Slash spurns, let it be the corners of his mind where happy thoughts fail to swallow the darkness, or the bottom of his heart, a sanction of everything he's ever felt and wanted jumbled together. And as far as he knows, it isn't ignored, but more so hidden behind stage lights and camera flashes. It was concealed; forbidden in such a way.

He wishes for Slash to know that just like Lucie Manette, he had served to be the last dream of his soul. The guitarist had eternalized within Axl, and now, nothing more than years and years of piled hatred broaden the schism between them. Nothing more than empty promises wallow in the deserted studio in Chicago, where Izzy had made his final choice to leave, and where Steven Adler had cursed his sorrows upon Axl. And it was the same place where Slash had returned in 1996, comprehending that Guns N' Roses could not continue on the way it was.

However, it is 2016, and Axl watches with utter dismay as Slash adjusts the strap of his Les Paul, his feet tapping against the stage with anticipation as he peers on ahead. In the reflection of Slash's glasses, Axl could see the vast arena, rows and rows of seats extending outwards— rows that would soon be swarmed with fans. He could also see Duff, who fiddles with his amplifier, charmingly making smalltalk with the road crew.

Slash turns his head, and Axl can't tell whether he was looking directly back at him, or somewhere else in the same line of view. The cusps of a smirk play on the other man's lips, but Axl doesn't know what it represents. And Axl doesn't know why he had ever agreed to having Slash and Duff rejoin the band, because for some obscure reason—another thing Axl isn't quite sure of— he was doing just fine beforehand. He was rebuilding a life for himself, whether it be lonely or not. He was getting over the solitude's impounding force on his existence, just the way he was getting over Slash's lasting presence that coalesced within each breath he took. He was no longer seeing prototypes of his former bandmates each time he peered into his empty living room, and he had learned to accept waking up each morning without the comfort of another body beside him.

Axl was getting used to it.

But now this abrupt awakening of GN'R that had obliterated the lasting rumors of hatred between him and Slash overthrew the entire idea. Axl suddenly felt impaled, as though he had been stabbed in the back by his own heart's desires. He believed that he would only see Slash with antipathy broiling in his stomach. But all he felt when looking at the other man was whole. He felt complete again, for the world was destined to uphold the sight of them together. It was bound, and it was all Axl had ever wished and known.

Although, Axl wasn't blind.
He wishes he was.

Slash used to look at Axl with adulation and joy transpiring across his face. Now, he looks at another person the same way.

He looks at a beautiful woman, one whom Axl recognizes from the late 80s, with that same exact admiration struck upon his expression. And she carries this camera, and wears this elegant hat, and Axl feels like he's suffocating. She was the one who fulfilled the spaces in Slash's life that Axl had left desolate, and she was the one who kissed him each chance he needed to feel loved, while Axl's lips remained as cold as they did on that gloomy day in '96.

His eyes bore into the reflection of Slash's glasses, watching as this elegant woman takes up the view within them as she emerges from behind Axl. She waltzes right past him and throws her arms around Slash's waist.