A/N: An AU in which we explore a different dynamic between Josh and Neku….
There were times Neku wondered exactly how benevolent Joshua really was, if at all. He'd been wondering ever since the nightmares started coming back. The terrors of reliving the Game every time he dared close his eyes, every time he wanted to just sleep.
Adrenaline coursed through his blood on waking, and for a brief moment, he was looking down the barrel of a gun.
His gun.
Looking into eyes that stared empty and cold, ageless and unsettling. Emotionless and cruel spiced with a tainted light of twisted amusement, those wide amethyst orbs glared at his torso as a nimble, skinny finger pulled the trigger like nothing pleased him more than shooting a teenager in the middle of the day.
The giggle seemed more sinister than he remembered it being as his mind replayed it over and over. It was haunting, chilling...malicious. That giggle once woke him from a pleasant dream and left him shaking like a leaf in the fall. The sound of cold amusement always irked him, and he never could quite place why until he looked at Joshua from more than just a partner view.
When he acknowledged that the being with him for that one week, and the end game, was in fact the closest thing to a high-and-mighty deity, untied by the constraints of humanity and everything that implied...emotions, morality, human decensy...well…
Then he became scared.
Very scared.
Because as much as he wanted to imagine that Yoshiya Kiryu was a misunderstood, annoying yet somewhat decent being...when looked at in the true angle, the truth was indeed frightening.
The Composer was a monster.
Plain and simple.
Something had happened, whether on purpose or through some twisted whim of fate, to Joshua's very soul, maybe as early as his childhood, that led to the Composer becoming utterly callous, totally cruel, and unashamedly psychopathic and megalomanic.
Neku had been a plaything throughout the entire three weeks of the Reapers Game, and Joshua hadn't even bothered to hide that fact after revealing himself. He admitted it with pride and smugness that defined his soul as empty and cold. He took PRIDE in the knowledge that he had stripped Neku down to nothing, then dragged that nothing through hell three times before unashamedly shooting him back to life to suffer the aftereffects on his own.
The reality of the revelation floored him. Yet at the same time, he tried desperately to ascertain why. WHY was Joshua a monster? Did he really take pleasure in watching the world burn? No. Because Shibuya didn't burn in the end. Did he do it to make some kind of statement? No. No statement needed to be made that would ever warrant murder and psychological torture of that magnitude.
Looking back on the entire thing, and what it led to, Neku had a very good idea why. Why Joshua was so manipulative. Why he had intentionally put him through hell three times, raked him over the coals, and shredded his mentality so thoroughly and then gave him the means to stop the torture permanently.
Joshua wanted to die.
The monster wanted to be put out of his misery. He knew his reign had gone too long and he himself had grown too sick and twisted to continue his duties as the head of the district and he wanted Neku to be the one to kill him and take his place.
The window opened slightly.
Neku saw the monster in his room.
"You have another chance. Will you take it?"
The voice was sneering, the eyes condescending. Blood was on pale hands that made no movement when his own reached for the thin, giggling throat.
The look he got when the amethyst eyes began to close for the last time was a snarky twinkle of gratitude, and the crack of bone was muffled by one final giggle, this time one of relief.