#sock post

What comes back is a communal recollection, the piecemeal mirror image of what he was to everyone else. Hero, protector, the eleventh hour rescue. Benevolent stranger, familiar voice of reason. He shimmers into being in a halo of equalizer bars, sum of the whole of their collective desperation.

Imagination is a powerful thing. Here he is: a coalescence. Neku as far as they can recreate him. Filtered, directed grief. There are holes unfilled, unnoticed, unneeded, smoothed over by relief and urgency and the fulfillment each of the role they need him to play. They can only remake what they know, and won't notice the absence of what they don't. He is, without complaint, what they've asked for. A powerful ally, a mentor, guidance, cool and unflappable and connected, the simple reassurance that someone has done this before and come out the other side compassionate, placid, and well-adjusted. The return of a friend, the return of potentially something more.

AIGHT DUDES! In order to keep better track of things (myself) and condense stuff (me) I will be reblog shit under a new blog. I'm doing this bc I am a dumb ass with identity crises 24/7 and make whole ass new blogs under different emails when I just need a snack to calm down.

me, walking through the kitchen: 12

Joshua starts in with praise and Neku's immediately calling him on his shit. Telling him off. Joshua apologizes and in the same breath uses it to hit on Neku. Neku says "bend reality for me" and Joshua asks if he'd rather have that power instead, presumably killing Joshua in the process, but Neku doesn't need to in order to go home, he's got this horrible little godling wrapped around his finger and he knows it. When he tells Joshua to alter reality and raise the dead, Joshua does exactly as asked, no loopholes no wiggle room, just asking if that's really what Neku wants, asking Neku to stay without asking him to stay, and he crafts Neku a space to occupy and life to live after confirming he's sure of what he wants. They're different people. This is where they diverge, and isn't that beautiful? Neku didn't shoot, and Joshua doesn't have to anymore.

deliberate leveling of the playing field, one gun for each. just for neku, joshua makes himself touchable. just for joshua, neku appeals to the mundane. the human. his friend. here is a heart you can crush in your hand. just a person, nothing more, the only person left at the end of the trail when everyone else has been stripped away and you have to prove both what you have learned from the journey.

here's what you thought you wanted. solitude. power. silence. death. the impersonal shroud of invulnerability.

here are the things you can no longer stand to reach for, the same as above, cold metal in your palms and the city on your shoulders, a flawed man who loved a thing he fundamentally misunderstood gone for the exercise, not even static at your feet. everything you can give, everything you have left to take, on the floor with him.