(no subject)
This fic's concept differs from my usual headcanon, but I wanted to toy with it anyway.
--
Joshua pulled the trigger. The bullet made a neat tunnel through his skull. But even that failed to make an impact on him; he jumped off the top of 104 the next day.
.
When he discovered this body of his was immortal -- "Call it a kickback for makin' it to Composer, J." -- Joshua filed that information in the back of his mind. The first death had been painful enough. His spine had arched like an inchworm's before every segment slipped out of its proper place in a series of clicks too fast for him to hear. The train had been quite unforgiving.
Joshua didn't know how long he'd be stuck as Composer. He only knew that he would be the Composer until the Angels said "No", and they hadn't said it yet. He had his Game with Neku, blinked once and discovered Neku had a family now, blinked again and saw an old man, blinked one more time and saw his grave. Joshua stopped listening to the news; he didn't want to know how long he'd been working this job. It was a kind of Hell, not knowing how long he had to live, not knowing how to live.
The essence of living was to die.
He learnt a cold blade stung more, belatedly.
Joshua was disappointed when his eyes opened. Nothing had changed. He was still Composer. Shibuya was still flawed. Apathy still ran strong.
.
Joshua took to dying like it was a hobby. Something to do in the brief, idle moments he snatched for himself. Poisons and its ilk weren't to Joshua's taste. Poison left a numbingly acidic aftertaste on his tongue, fouled up his ramen even after it was long gone. The scalds on the inside of his throat and the burbling unease of his stomach lingered even after his body revived itself. And it was bad form to meet with his Producer, green in the face. After the first two tests, Joshua never used them again.
He wasn't fond of asphyxiation either. Too slow and drawn out for his tastes. Oh, there was a certain thrill, a mindless rush that came from being deprived from oxygen, and other pleasures -- an observant person from the past had noticed hanged men died happy. Strangulation was slow and tantalising, an easy way to drive any person to the brink of many things. Sanity was often closest. Joshua needed his sanity intact.
No, Joshua preferred his deaths to be brutally physical. Messy where he chose to strike at himself, immaculately clean where he didn't. Every slash at himself, angled differently. Every shot to his head, bled from different locations. It was a sudden, morbid fascination, perhaps with the various ways the body reacted to having life forced out of it. An interest at how this immortal body managed to put itself back together -- not perfectly, it was never perfect -- despite the beatings Joshua ran it through. Or maybe just a strange obsession of squeezing some kind of pain out of dying, because he expected pain but received none. Only something that was short. Sharp. And gone.
...It bored him, eventually. Dying.
It had been more exciting than living, but shorter lived. He supposed dying got boring because nothing changed when he died. Death was supposed to change things. Death was supposed to be significant. His first death had significant.
Joshua took up smoking. He liked the smoke. He hated the smell. But, he thought, grinding the stub into ashtray and rising, it was just another way of trying to die.
--
Joshua pulled the trigger. The bullet made a neat tunnel through his skull. But even that failed to make an impact on him; he jumped off the top of 104 the next day.
.
When he discovered this body of his was immortal -- "Call it a kickback for makin' it to Composer, J." -- Joshua filed that information in the back of his mind. The first death had been painful enough. His spine had arched like an inchworm's before every segment slipped out of its proper place in a series of clicks too fast for him to hear. The train had been quite unforgiving.
Joshua didn't know how long he'd be stuck as Composer. He only knew that he would be the Composer until the Angels said "No", and they hadn't said it yet. He had his Game with Neku, blinked once and discovered Neku had a family now, blinked again and saw an old man, blinked one more time and saw his grave. Joshua stopped listening to the news; he didn't want to know how long he'd been working this job. It was a kind of Hell, not knowing how long he had to live, not knowing how to live.
The essence of living was to die.
He learnt a cold blade stung more, belatedly.
Joshua was disappointed when his eyes opened. Nothing had changed. He was still Composer. Shibuya was still flawed. Apathy still ran strong.
.
Joshua took to dying like it was a hobby. Something to do in the brief, idle moments he snatched for himself. Poisons and its ilk weren't to Joshua's taste. Poison left a numbingly acidic aftertaste on his tongue, fouled up his ramen even after it was long gone. The scalds on the inside of his throat and the burbling unease of his stomach lingered even after his body revived itself. And it was bad form to meet with his Producer, green in the face. After the first two tests, Joshua never used them again.
He wasn't fond of asphyxiation either. Too slow and drawn out for his tastes. Oh, there was a certain thrill, a mindless rush that came from being deprived from oxygen, and other pleasures -- an observant person from the past had noticed hanged men died happy. Strangulation was slow and tantalising, an easy way to drive any person to the brink of many things. Sanity was often closest. Joshua needed his sanity intact.
No, Joshua preferred his deaths to be brutally physical. Messy where he chose to strike at himself, immaculately clean where he didn't. Every slash at himself, angled differently. Every shot to his head, bled from different locations. It was a sudden, morbid fascination, perhaps with the various ways the body reacted to having life forced out of it. An interest at how this immortal body managed to put itself back together -- not perfectly, it was never perfect -- despite the beatings Joshua ran it through. Or maybe just a strange obsession of squeezing some kind of pain out of dying, because he expected pain but received none. Only something that was short. Sharp. And gone.
...It bored him, eventually. Dying.
It had been more exciting than living, but shorter lived. He supposed dying got boring because nothing changed when he died. Death was supposed to change things. Death was supposed to be significant. His first death had significant.
Joshua took up smoking. He liked the smoke. He hated the smell. But, he thought, grinding the stub into ashtray and rising, it was just another way of trying to die.