Disclaimer: I don't own Yami no Matsuei. I am speaking the truth.

Title: Different

Author: Luin-lote

Pairing: Tsuzuki/Hisoka

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Er. Some? But no, none really.

Summary: Hisoka ponders... What if things had been different?

A/N: I don't really write anime ficlets anymore, but I guess a part of my heart is still so-much-in-love with Tsusoka? So these small ficlets just come to me sometimes, and... sometimes I just have to post them, fore some reason. Hope someone will get at least a little bit enjoyment out of this!

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Hisoka had thought long and hard about what might have happened, had things been different.

What if he hadn't been like this?
What if his parents hadn't hated him?
What if they hadn't locked him up in the basement?
What if Muraki hadn't killed him?

What if he hadn't become a shinigami?

Those were things he used to ponder in his most lonely hours, when the walls creeped up on him, and the darkness seemed to grab at him, swollow him whole.

Before, when he still was a new shinigami, new to that world, he used to really hate the job.

It didn't pay well, his discovering of the truth around his own death hadn't helped him to settle anything, hadn't made him happier or more peaceful in the slightest. He had, in the frank way Hisoka would say it – gotten a maniac crazy murderer after him, even when he was already dead. He had gotten an incompetent moron for a partner. He hardly got time to read anymore.

For so many weeks, this was all Hisoka could think about, when he started his work at En-Ma-Cho.

Now, Hisoka had worked there for a very long time. He wasn't even sure he knew how long it was, anymore. But, nowadays, he often thought that... maybe it wasn't so bad, after all?

It still didn't pay well to be a shinigami. Especially not when Tsuzuki would "borrow" money from him more often than he would not.

But, honestly – there are other things more important than money. Hisoka just hadn't discovered them until long after his death.

And, maybe it hadn't made him happier to know what killed him, or to know that he was cursed at but thirteen. But when he thought back now, he found that his life before death, wasn't even worthy to be compared to his afterlife as a Shinigami.

He still hated Muraki. Hated him more than ever before, probably. He hated him more than anything, and sometimes Hisoka scared himself with how deep that hatred was; how deep his soul, mind, body and heart yearned for revenge.

But now the revenge was mostly for Tsuzuki.

Tsuzuki...

Hisoka still had a moron for a partner. Really.

A moron that could still surprise Hisoka even after all these years. Tsuzuki. Tsuzuki Asato.

Tsuzuki never stopped amazing Hisoka. He never stopped giving of himself; giving too much of himself.

His constant slacking off in the paperwork-department was again and again made up for by his complete seriousness and whole-hearted sincereness in all of his cases.

"I'm not human, They all said I wasn't human," In the deepest, darkest pits of self-hate, Tsuzuki would utter such words, repeat them again and again and again, and Hisoka would watch in horror and sadness, with twisting agony, his heart breaking. He would watch, see such intense hate and pain that he couldn't even fathom, couldn't understand how someone could hate themself so much.

He would grab Tsuzuki's hand in such a tight grip that it was probably painful, and he would hold the person he knew was more human than anyone Hisoka had ever met before.

For Tsuzuki was so human that it hurt. He would make mistakes just like everyone else. More than anyone else, even. He would get drunk, and he would trip and fall, and he would laugh until he cried, and cry until he could cry no more, and he would be happy and sad and he would look into Hisoka's eyes with such intensity that Hisoka thought that his knees would give in, and he would hold Hisoka back, and he would spill coffee on his new white shirt and he would care. He would care for anyone.

Tsuzuki would care for anyone, so much that it would hurt.

Tsuzuki was extraordinary.

If things had been different... if Hisoka hadn't become a Shinigami...

He was sitting at the office, in his hard chair, by his old and worn desk, and as he looked over his shoulder to once again see Tsuzuki getting scolded by Tatsumi, something that could have been the flicker of a smile graced his face.

He ruffled the edges of the pages in the file that he was reading absetmindedly, and shook his head. He didn't even want to think about what might have been if he hadn't ever been a Shinigami.

Owari