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Sometimes, Johan thinks he cannot feel love.
He can attempt a pale imitation of the emotion, can imagine what it would be like to love someone to the point of willing to give them his everything, but when it all boils down to it, he is but a blind man attempting to see something that he cannot.
The feeling is foreign to him, of loving and being loved.
He wonders what it's like for someone to love him back. His mother hadn't and his sister couldn't and whatever crumbs of love he can take are given to the character he plays, the role he takes that are an imitation of everyone but Johan Liebert, an empty shell of a being who is cruel, sadistic, and hateful to this world.
Johan is undeserving of love, after all, how can he take what he cannot give, a simple emotion that makes up what a human is, the ability to care for someone, family, friends, lovers, something Johan cannot imagine. He does not kill his sister, not out of love, but out of obligation, for he kills as easily as he breaths, but cares for nothing.
He thinks love is beneath him, whatever the emotion would feel like, because if he could not feel it, then it would not matter if he did because Johan is cold, hard steel and that's the reason why he's alive.
There is two of him and not a single one of him could feel the emotion called love.
Love is meaningless in death, love cannot save people from the cool, hard steel of a gun either and Johan has no qualms of shooting someone who is loved by many.
Johan cannot love and frankly, he is thankful for it.
***
His name is Tenma Kenzou and he had saved Johan once, when he was a young child no one wanted alive.
He gave up his reputation to keep someone, who wasn't even worth an inch of care, alive and Johan wonders would he had done the same if he knew who Johan truly was beneath the bloody body, beneath the look of an innocent child.
But he does not dwell on the fact because the doctor had saved him, in the end, and Johan doesn't like to owe a debt. Usually, he kills the people he owes, revels in the wretched expression of humanity on their faces before seeing the light leave their eyes, and there is no one to owe a debt towards in the end, but he had wanted the doctor to be alive back then. No, rather, he was willing to kill not just for himself and his own pleasure, but for the doctor and his own inching anger.
The doctor was horrified at the sight meant for him and even the shock and disgust in his eyes didn't change Johan's want to keep him alive. He wants to see the everchanging emotions on the doctor's face, wants to see the passing seasons on the doctor's face, and so he tells him, "How can I kill the man who saved me?" and leaves without a second glance.
Gratitude, he decides in the end. Gratitude and obligation is the reasonable explanation for why the doctor was not on the ground, his eyes void of any life.and unmoving.
Love is impossible because if his own flesh and blood couldn't love him, then this body, this soul was truly void of love.
Gratitude, he tells himself once again and slips into the dead of the night, the want to kill quenched for the first time in awhile.
***
Some people see the world in black and white. Someone people see the world in shades of gray. Johan sees the world in a canopy of red, covering every inch of the world and red is the color of anger, of passion, of love, but it is also the color of blood, something Johan sees every day without fail and it is the only constant in his life, in this everchanging life.
His name changes, his family changes, his location changes, his personality changes, but in the end of the day, he is Johan Libert and wherever Johan Libert goes, death is soon to follow, in a flurry of red and tragedy. He enjoys it, likes to see the very people he's cultivated and charmed be killed by the very same person they put their trust in, put love and affection into. Some love him as a son, others a friend, and others as someone worth spending a lifetime with in marriage.
He kills them all the same because he does not see the world in shades, nor black or white, he sees everyone as the same color.
He meets Tenma again, and he notices the doctor is more haggard than the last time he's seen him, less cheerful, less naive. He looks tired and he looks at Johan as someone he needs to take responsibility for, someone he needs to kill. Johan does not kill him, instead he simply watches.
The doctor chases after him and with every encounter that leaves both of them alive, he becomes less like the shade of red that matches everyone else and for the first time, Johan sees in color other than red.
He sees a myriad of colors, all inside one person, the everchanging colors of this man who had once saved him and is now trying to kill him.
The doctor cannot kill though, for as much as he tells him he will, as much as he expresses he must. He looks at Johan as a human, as someone who has a life and someone to worry about, morally.
People do not see Johan as a human, he has the soul of cattle to them, someone who is so far from being human that killing him is not as if it would be killing a human, but instead, shooting at something that shouldn't exist.
The doctor is quite foolish to care about Johan's mortality, as if he were just another human, because Johan is not another human, he is not just a human with skewed morals, but he is someone imitating a human.
He does not have simple empathy nor love, the qualities that make a human truly a human. He is a monster in human form, wearing flesh that does not match him and with every life he's killed, the more he strays farther from being human.
"I'll finish what I started," The doctor says and he holds a gun to Johan's head.
He cannot shoot because he believes Johan to be a human. He believes that there is some part of him that could love.
Johan wonders if that's really true.
***
He wants to keep playing this game of cat and mouse, for the doctor to be following his trail religiously and Johan finds it quite amusing.
He thinks that he's begun to view the doctor as his doctor.
His doctor follows after him, like a good, faithful dog and Johan hadn't wanted to kill him then and he still doesn't want to kill him now. Rather, he wants to keep him at his side. Johan possesses nothing of his own because he has nothing of his own. Nothing belongs to him nor do any of his everchanging personas get to keep anything dear to them, so he thinks it's time to start having one.
His doctor is a fine possession. He certainly keeps Johan entertained and there is gratitude mingled in with these emotions. Johan doesn't want to kill him, far from it, because as much as he likes their game of tag, he also wants to keep his doctor on a leash, bound in chains and seated right next to him.
Perhaps, he thinks, he wants something to own. Perhaps, his little, cold empty heart wanted something to claim as his own because if he couldn't love, he might as well have something to call his own, something that is thoroughly his.
He wants to lock his doctor up, like a bird in a cage, and listen to the doctor's cries until he could cry no more, until he can only stay a silent bird by Johan's side for eternity.
Stop, the little voice inside him screams, as it always does whenever he pulls the trigger of his gun or whenever he drives the knife inside someone.
Little birdie, the louder part of him dubs his doctor, deafening the smaller voice. How he wanted to keep him to himself.
This, too, cannot be love because this was too cruel to be love. His monster just wanted to choke and wring the freedom of this man, but he didn't truly want to give the man his everything. He wanted the man's everything, but he could not give the same.
Possession, he thinks to himself, thinking about one new emotion.
Possession and gratitude.
***
His doctor saves him once more.
Johan remembers he once wondered if the doctor would have saved him if he were to knew about the monster inside him.
The monster inside him is loud, with sadistic cruelty and want for the suffering of others to placate itself. It's a depraved monster, but at the end of the day, it was a monster that was alive because the doctor had saved him once more.
Gratitude. He had felt that before once and while it was a steady flow of emotion he consistently felt for the doctor, it was different from the emotions that were circulating in him.
Possession. He had wanted to keep his doctor by his side, still feels the constant want to, but the word was not enough to describe the emotion he felt as well.
Love.
He wonders if that's what he was feeling.
He watches his doctor's sleeping figure besides his bed, worn out from work and the past few years that had weighed down on him. He sticks out a hand and runs a hand through strands of the doctor's hair, that are considerably shorter as the doctor has cut them since the game of tag has ended, since Johan had been caught in the end.
Love was foreign to him, he didn't know how it felt.
But this feeling inside him at the moment was foreign to him as well, unknown to his mind, an unexplainable emotion he couldn't put a name to.
He leans in and presses a light kiss on the bridge of the doctor's nose, watching the changing emotion on his doctor's face at the sudden disruption of his peaceful sleep. He does not awake and Johan does not attempt to awake him either just runs his hand through his hair and steals another kiss before getting up from his place on the bed.
He sneaks out of the hospital and walks through the chilly streets with hospital clothes on.
He still sees in shades of red, still wants to satisfy the ever scresming monster within him, but some part of him loves. There is two of him, one of them is a monster and one of them is weak, but both of them can love.
Love. It's not a bad feeling, he decides, in the end.