Hello again or for the first time, Murayama Tsuru here. Tonight, instead of updating my Naruto story, I have wandered into the land of Monster where the bad guys are really pretty and the good guys want to (but fail miserably every time) shoot the anti-Christ-like Johan-kun. Yeah, well don't know how well I did with this, because I think Johan is a little like Kamui from Gintama (emotionless yet all smiles and psychopathy). So, here is this oneshot that I felt I had to write because I finished the manga really recently. Also, please forgive any plot points that I may have missed. I didn't actually get to read all 18 volumes of the manga and have yet to catch up to them in the Anime, so there may be things I get wrong. Well I hope you enjoy ^_^
Disclaimer: I don't own Monster; it belongs to Urasawa Naoki. But, man do I wish Monster was mine! If it was that would be so very awesome.
As he stood there, finger pressed against the middle of his forehead, watching Dr. Tenma as his hand shook slightly making the gun he was pointing at the blond move slightly off course, the randomest thought passed through his head; it always seemed to rain whenever the two met. His eyes narrowed slightly as all those memories flitted through his mind as he waited to Tenma to pull the trigger.
It had been raining when he had been shot by his sister. All he had wanted to do was give her everything, be the only person worth anything to her. He had even killed for her, those people who had taken them in weren't good people (in his mind anyway). None of them had any children of their own so it's not like they had been taken in because of sympathy for their plights. Those people only wanted children because they themselves were lonely, selfish people.
But when they ran away to that desolate, barren land, Johan knew that this was the end they both should have. The two nameless twins, nameless monsters from that man's foul story would meet their end here, he had thought at the time. But no, that other man, that wretched General Wolf, rescued them. And worse, that old general had the gall to name him after that man's monster. All that did was reinforce the fact that he knew he was an unwanted, nameless monster that his mother had protected on accident.
And then, they were separated, he was sent to that place that stripped him of the few emotions he had left. That place he learned that he could control the others around him. That place that he knew he had to escape from or else he would never see his sister again. He'd never forget about her of course, but not seeing her was just as bad. So, escaping was his first priority no matter what the cost would be later.
When he finally managed to escape after setting those fools against each other (and laughing hysterically as the place burned) and succeeded in reaching his sister again, that couple, the Lieberts, wanted to flee to West Germany. For some reason, they wanted a child and chose him which threatened to separate him from his beloved twin again. And that was something he would not stand for, so he convinced them to adopt her as well and he all but left behind the places he could never forget.
Soon after, he killed the Lieberts as well, when they let that Monster of a man in to take them away again. To take them to that mansion where they held the 'recitals'. No, if this other foolish couple wanted to give them away then they must go like the rest of them. The monster that was created in him because of that man would not let this go on. So he had to kill these two to make sure that he wouldn't be able to lay his hands on either him or his sister again.
He hadn't been expecting Anna to wake up when he had killed them (though, he didn't quite know why, gunshots were rather loud after all). But seeing her shocked face, seeing her look at him, her other half, with such horror, made something irreparable break inside him. He knew, right at that moment, that she would be the one to end him. She alone would be the one to destroy the monster that was forming inside him.
And yet, there was a part of him that wanted her to forgive him, to know that it wasn't his fault, to know that he did all this for her. There was a part of him that longed to tell her what had happened to him at Kinderheim 511…but he did not want her to be subjected to what he had been through, so he had never said anything. Instead, with a finger pressed to his forehead he handed her the gun he had used to kill the Lieberts and told her to shoot him, to forgive him, to understand him…to do anything to end this monster growing inside him.
On that rainy night, he should have died. And just as he heard the bang and the world went dark, that's what he thought, that he deserved death. What that place had done to him, what his mother had done to him; he wanted to destroy it all. And yet, he wanted to be gone from this world to let someone else fight the battles he so desperately wanted to fight. Now, the world would be spared from the cold, angry fire that was burning inside him...
And then he woke up from that never ending, emptiness to a man with ink-black hair ranting about how his fellow doctors were awful and were better off dead. Learning that this man was the man who had brought him back to this world despite being ordered to treat someone else, Johan decided that he would do as this man asked; kill the people who were better off dead, pay him back for the innocently wrong deed the doctor had committed.
Why was he going to help this Japanese doctor you ask? Because Dr. Tenma was the first and only indication that there was a God out there, looking out for the poor, wretched, nameless monster that Johan knew himself to be. Dr. Tenma, who believed that all life was equal, had made the mistake of bringing the monster that should have died back to life. He was like the father Johan never had; the God he knew didn't exist, because he saved him, because Dr. Tenma didn't know what kind of monster he had unleashed on this world all because of his foolish notions about how all life was precious and brought a terrible evil back to this world. Helping the Japanese doctor would give him the status he deserved (the status that Johan had inadvertently taken away from him) and teach him the hard lesson about why he should have let Johan die and follow his boss's orders to operate on the mayor instead of the child who had killed his foster parents.
And that's what he did, he killed those three that his precious Dr. Tenma wanted dead. It was too easy to get the publicity-greedy doctors to take the muscle relaxant-laced candy. It was all too easy to escape with his sister the same night. But it wasn't easy for Johan to live with the fact that his sister was afraid of him now. It wasn't easy to watch her scream in absolute horror when he reached his hand out to her. It wasn't easy for him that the world saw the last tears he'd probably ever shed. It wasn't easy to leave her behind so soon after that because he knew that he couldn't be in her world at the moment.
Despite all these not-easy decisions that he made, he knew that he would eventually come back to her. But that didn't mean he couldn't watch her from afar, and he did. Countless times he found himself back in that town he had left her in, watching her grow up, watching her function without him. It saddened him, sort of, after all the nameless monster inside him didn't have any sadness to express, to see that his other half might be better off without him. All he had left was hate and darkness and nothing and a need to kill those who had wronged him.
He also found himself watching that doctor he was growing too close to. That man who was like a father to him, that man who had saved him. It made him strangely happy to know that he had succeeded in making Dr. Tenma the head of surgery. But Johan made sure that he visited this man even less than he visited his twin, as the doctor wasn't someone he wanted to see; he may have saved him but he should have died that rainy day. Perhaps this man would be the one to kill him, even though that was the privilege that should only go to his sister.
And then on that rainy day when he lured Junkers to the construction site, he hadn't been expecting Tenma to show up there at all. He knew, of course, that Tenma had been called to operate on his lock-picker, but he hadn't thought that they would be close enough that Junkers would warn Tenma away from him. That foolish man had no right to drive away his God from him; the death Johan was planning to give him seemed even more justified then. As he pulled the trigger, the only thought about his foolish lock-picker was 'good riddance'.
After their second face-to-face meeting, Johan knew for certain that Tenma would be the one to kill him. Anna (or Nina as she went by now) had her chance to end him, but that had failed, so now it was the doctor's turn. Maybe this time he could finally leave this world that had made him who he was. Johan had a fiercely masochistic happiness at the thought that the person who had brought him back to life all those years ago would be the person to take that same life away.
But for a man who was so smart and almost god-like in Johan's mind, he was absolutely terrible at making the kill shot Johan so desperately wanted. Johan had made it so easy for Dr. Tenma time and time again and yet, he continually failed to kill the monster he had brought back to life. Why was it, Johan wondered, that Tenma could shoot Roberto, but not him? It must be because the man still had some foolish belief that he could reason with the monster inside Johan.
And then, things changed even more, he learned that he wasn't the one who was at the Red Rose Mansion, but his sister. Somehow he had taken in what his sister had told him all that time ago and made the memories his own. That cemented even more firmly the idea that Dr. Tenma should be the one to kill him. His sister couldn't make things better anymore. She may have forgiven him for all the things he had done up until this point, but that wasn't enough anymore. The monster that had been yelling orders inside of him for so long now would not be silenced by the forgiveness of his sister. Her understanding and forgiveness had come too late, they were no longer the not-so-innocent ten year olds they had been. Too many things had happened, too many lives taken for the sake of his monster, for the sake of revenge, for her forgiveness to mean anything anymore.
But of course, even though Johan had a gun to an innocent child's head ensuring that Tenma would shoot him, ensuring that the doctor would finally be able to see the nameless wasteland that Johan had seen for all his life, the doctor who was more like an avenging angel of life and death than a god now, wasn't the one to shoot him. The father of the child who was Johan's insurance for Tenma's righteous fury had, rightly, shot the blond man to protect his child.
And then, on that rainy day where memories blended into present time, he had finally got what he wanted, even though it was not Tenma who had been the one to deliver what he had so desperately needed all this time. As that darkness claimed him for a second time, Johan knew that his death wish had finally been granted. He was now alone in that never-ending wasteland, free to be the nameless monster he always knew he was. He was finally in that barren, nameless space that he so deserved. But, the longer he stayed there, wandering through a space that no one could reach, the more he hated it. That part of him that wanted to live had decided to rear its ugly head again. The longer he stayed in that almost darkness, the more he couldn't shake that insatiable urge to live.
He wanted his sister to be his other half again. And, maybe more than he wanted his sister, he wanted Dr. Tenma. He wanted the man who was more than a father to him now to call him by that name he seldom thought of as his. He wanted to be the nameless monster that finally had a name in Franz Bonaparta's book. He was, in fact, that monster. Now that he wanted to be called Johan (by the man he shouldn't want), there was no one there to call him it. And that was somehow worse than all the other things he had been through.
Even though he wanted all this so badly, he knew he didn't deserve any of it. He didn't deserve his sister's affection or forgiveness, didn't deserve Tenma calling him by that name, didn't deserve anything. He was just a nameless monster who had wanted to die without anyone remembering him. But, in reality, in a place that he had long locked away, he wanted to live. He wanted someone to pay attention to him, to want him, to need him, unlike his mother who had abandoned him all that time ago.
And then he woke up, again, to Tenma talking to him as he had been all those years ago. Not ranting about how there were other people who deserved to die, but what had been happening during the three years that Johan had been in a coma. Interrupting that, though, Johan had to tell the man who had saved him once again, become once again that almost God-like figure, about how this all started. About how his mother had made him feel as if he was an unwanted child by saving him and sending his sister that that bloody mansion.
When Johan had told Tenma all that he wanted, needed, to tell the man, he left the hospital and tried to avoid anyone having to do with the events of his past as much as possible. But darkness tends to draw darkness, so staying invisible didn't work as well as he wanted it to. The monster in him that was much, much quieter in him now, still had its say in him every so often when Johan was forced to kill those who knew too much or got too close to his much wanted solitude.
Surreptitiously, though, he still followed Tenma's and his sister's lives. He had managed to track down where the doctor was living when he wasn't working with Doctors Without Borders. But, of course, he never attempted to make contact with the man, who was hardly ever home for more than a few days. To get too close to that past he had all but abandoned, would not constitute moving on from all those haunting memories he was trying to suppress.
But one day, his sister managed to find him at the hotel he was currently living in. The reunion had been…sour at best. Of course, being twins, anything that they needed to say to each other could be said without words. But then, Anna (he just couldn't call her Nina) mentioned that Tenma would be around for a few days. She hadn't said it, but it was clear that she wanted Johan to go visit the doctor.
Knowing that he had no intention of doing that, Johan had left his sister at his hotel. He had then wandered the streets for a while hoping that he wouldn't end up anywhere near Tenma. Naturally, though, his feet decided to betray him, and he found himself in front of the very house that he had been trying to avoid.
And, as with all the times that signified a meeting with Tenma, the clouds that had been gathering all day, finally let loose a slow, but steady rain, soaking Johan rather quickly. He looked up at the house; a light was on showing that Tenma was indeed at home at the moment. He then looked away, knowing that even just wanting to see the man who had saved him not once but twice was much more than he deserved.
He turned to go back to his hotel (and probably Anna waiting to chew him out for ditching her), but his body wouldn't move. Try as he might, he just could not force his legs to walk himself away from this infernal spot that housed that man that was his God.
And just as the rain was growing heavier he made up his mind to leave, to force his legs to move, to walk (preferably run) away from the man who had saved him, a door opened and a familiar kind, tired voice said, "Why don't you come inside? The rain has gotten pretty bad, hasn't it?"
And that is the end! Was it totally unsatisfying to end it with the only line of dialogue in this story? Probably ^_^ But, I think (probably extremely wrongly) that it fits with how the manga ended, openly. Well, yeah, I kinda said all I wanted to say at the beginning author's note, so there's not much I want to say now…I guess, maybe I made Johan a little to human, maybe? If you'd like, please leave a review, I want to know how I did. Writing Johan was kinda new for me, so I would love to know what you guys thought.
-Murayama Tsuru