a/n: this is a small little oneshot i dreamed up. happy new year!

dedication: to 2014.

disclaimer: i don't own anything.

summary: A God among mortals. – Izaya.

divine

It had been too long since he checked in on his precious humans – messengers told him that a century and two wars had passed, and he wanted to see the destruction they wrecked.

He was also lonely, but he didn't mention that.

So he chose a random destination – a sector of a human city called Tokyo – and whirled away.

Humans were delightful. They laughed and cried and screamed and all of it was music to Izaya's ears. He loved to stroll casually down the streets, outfitted all in black, and smiling a razor-toothed smile.

He so loved the incessant mortals, exulted in their petty problems and insignificant little lives. Short lives, too. Izaya was quite fascinated with the way these humans lied and killed and betrayed, all in a flash of emotions.

He grinned at the girl in front of him. She was a fledgling, a child still, and Izaya wondered what inane reason she would spout, what justification she would give for her act.

"What's your name?" she asked nervously, spinning the straw in her glass. Izaya observed the nervous moment and his grin only grew wider – she was afraid, he could tell, afraid of him, of what she was about to die, of what would await her in the afterlife.

"Naraka," he replied smoothly, giving the name of hell. Izaya hadn't told his real name to humans in centuries, having never found someone worthy of hearing the name of God.

"I – I'm Kamichika Rio," she smiled, though it came out as a grimace, "P – Pleased to meet you."

Izaya inclined his head to acknowledge her name and devoured her fear, wondering which of the oh-so-predictable reasons she would spout for her senseless waste of life.

"Um…we're going to suicide together?" Her statement felt more like a question and Izaya could see her entire life laid out in front of him – her average grades, her boring life, the parents who split apart and whose betrayal broke something inside her…how awfully uninteresting.

Still, Izaya smiled because she was still a human and still counted very precious in his mind. So, he asked her the only question that had any merit, "Do you believe in God?"

To his shock – but not surprise – she shook her head vehemently, "No, of course not! How could there be a god with all this war and strife and suffering?"

Izaya strolled away from the scene a minute later, the building burning down to the tune of a teenage girl's screams. He had received variants of the same answer many times and was quite puzzled about it – he wondered who had told them that God was kind.

The days passed by into a pattern after that. Izaya delved into the many facets of human life, attempting to completely immerse himself in their curious little actions, to understand them, to revere them as they revered him.

Most of them were so predictable and boring – Izaya detested boredom. However, without fail, there was a few in each profession he undertook that simply puzzled him.

There was an actor who preformed without any visible emotion. A tout for a sushi shop that was loud and frightening and yet reassuring at the same time. A couple who gushed about things that Izaya had frankly never heard about – and how it galled him to admit that. A scientist that seemed to have no care for human life and instead worshipped a dullahan. A girl who had no capacity for love, a container for a demon sword.

But Izaya loved challenges so he cultivated these interesting little humans, observing them closely as he tried to crack the code that they ran on.

He has not succeeded to this day.

Izaya loved his humans but there were times when he sought the comfort of the familiar, of monsters and magic and other things concealed from mortal eyes.

There was a dullahan, a headless fairy, named Celty, searching for her head, and Izaya had numerous conversations with her, though Celty was oddly formal with him. Saika, the sword, was slightly more difficult to talk to, as she kept on gushing about love, but they managed to find common ground and build up from there as they discussed knives and cleavers and dirks and all manner of pointy things.

He even managed to find a half-monster masquerading as a human in the genetic cesspool that was Ikebukuro.

He had chosen a wise landing point, indeed.

Whether by luck or by chance, Izaya went one and a half years without meeting the infamous Fortissimo of Ikebukuro. He hadn't heard of him either, or he would've already gone in search of this mindless beast, as so many described him.

Their meeting was quite by chance – Izaya almost walked into him while exiting a store – and as eventful as it was unusual.

He walked out, narrowly missing the well-built blond – Shizuo, as he would later glean from the conversations – and paused, looking at the unfamiliar face. Shizuo, on the other hand, took one look at Izaya's dark red eyes and perpetually amused face and threw his cigarette on the ground, crushing it underneath a heel.

"I don't like you," he informed a visibly surprised Izaya, before picking up a vending machine and chucking it at the god.

Of course, after that rather shocking new development, Izaya simply couldn't leave him alone. He stalked the man for weeks, poking and prodding and pushing all his buttons – the human was simply too interesting to ignore.

He was so unpredictable. Just when Izaya would think that he got Shizuo all figured out, the blond bartender would do something to upset the theory.

And Izaya so loved a challenge.

The game they played – the alley-set battle of cat-and-mouse in which Izaya was never too clear on who was the cat and who was the mouse – had an abrupt ending.

Izaya knelt next to the fallen man, brushing away the hair that was sticking to his face in the light rain. He ignored the blood that pooled under them, soaking into his pants and infusing the air with a metallic odor.

"Izaya," Shizuo made an effort to smile, "Heh. You bastard. Can't believe you're actually crying. What's the matter, wanted to kill me yourself?"

Izaya touched his face to find that he was, indeed, crying, far too used to being caught off guard in Shizuo's presence. "Don't be an idiot," he murmured lightly, "You're not going to die."

His mind hissed at the presence of the lie but Izaya wearily pushed that part of him away. He could pretend, just for a minute, that the human he loved most wasn't bleeding to death on the cold, wet concrete.

"I'm dying," Shizuo said firmly, startling Izaya out of the fantasy walls he'd erected, "I'm dying, Izaya, and there's nothing you can do about it." He paused, looking into Izaya's red eyes with far-too-knowledgeable brown ones, "…That's what's irritating you. You can't do anything about it – you, for all your power."

Izaya didn't even care how Shizuo had found out what he was. He was far more concerned with the gaping hole in Shizuo's chest from where the bullet had intercepted human skin.

For because despite all that Shizuo said, he was still human.

"Heh," Shizuo laughed weakly, his ribs heaving with the effort, "A helpless god. I never thought I'd see the day."

Izaya wanted to tell Shizuo to shut up, but the words froze in his throat. A few more minutes and he wouldn't even be able to hear that voice anyone, rasping as it was.

Shizuo was right – Izaya may be able to rule and kill and read a person's life with a single look but he did not govern the dead.

He could not save him, this one precious human that managed to capture a god's interest.

Shizuo died in Izaya's arms, the remnants of the fearsome gang battle littered around them. Izaya waited for a moment, just to be sure he was dead, before discarding the body and walking away, disappearing into the shadows.

Izaya never visited his humans again.

le fin

a/n: well. this didn't really turn out the way i planned…