Title: fire the fields (your empty soul)

Summary: He woke up an infant in a young man's body.

Warnings: Violence and profanity. Usual disclaimers apply.

He woke up an infant in a young man's body.

All he saw was white and blue color over an expansive gray desert of mechanical and biological ruin surrounded him.

The newborn consciousness couldn't tell what he saw, what he touched, what he smelled, what he heard. The deluge of information brought him to his knees. He grasped, he inhaled and he swung his head around to take in every piece of information. His mind felt like it would crack under the strain of a thousand unknowns. Just as it felt about to explode, he heard something:

"Alive"

The word thundered in his head. Yes, word. Every piece of information had a name to it. The gray streams over the plain were a word; "fog". The blue and white light was a word; "fire". And he… he was…

What word was he?

Everything around him was a word in his head, but he didn't know the word for himself. Staring at his "hands", his "uniform", and the burning "sword" by his side, he didn't know.

"Who am I?" he said.

He heard another noise like rumbling. He swung around to see an expanse of black turquoise, deepening areas contrasting to appear like a face. Not rumbling; it was laughter. He clapped his hands over his ears to stop the menacing sound but heard an ominous "voice" grow in his head.

"Good morning and happy birthday, sonny boy!"

Despite the burning flames, he felt chilled and the words escaped him. He found himself staring at the approaching figure and hearing maniacal laughter.

"That priest almost nailed me there. Good he turned out to be weak like all the others. As for you, you might've given a good fight…" there was a ragged sense about the black turquoise figure, like it was "bleeding". "But you're not even at the level of my shit."

"Who am I?" he repeated the only words he knew, compelled by the muscle memory of saying the phrase.

" 'Who am I'? Oops, so sorry." There was no apology in the voice, just shameless mirth. "Must've rattled what little brains you had when I dragged ya down here."

"Who am I?!" his insistence startled him and he felt a rush as the familiarity of his own voice resounded through him, bringing him back, reminding him of- of…

… it was gone. The silence in his consciousness was all that answered him. The feeling of loss was all he had. He pulled himself off the ground and stood in the fire, a confused being.

"Who am I?"

An expansive deep turquoise enveloped him and he finally saw a twisted man clad in black speaking. His eyes burned like his own. "Ya want so badly to know who you are? Fine. You are my tool, my instrument, my key to conquer Assiah. Y'know, where you just got here from. The world of that bitch I screwed to get you."

His confusion must have showed, for the laughter slammed into him again.

"Yeah kiddo, did ya think 'sonny boy' was just a joke?"

Time was supposed to be meaningless to those that resided in Gehenna. Granted immortality by their god, they had the whole of eternity at their leisure - provided they didn't let themselves be destroyed by the pesky so-called "exorcists" of Assiah. There was never a time they hadn't existed. Even if there was, it was so long ago that nothing of that time remained.

But he was different. He had a beginning. The beginning was the moment he awoke in this world. The beginning was at the ruined plains. The beginning was when Satan had told him his purpose. Time, his time, had started from that moment.

From the beginning, he had seen the differences. He learned and progressed, but the others did not. Some spoke of absolute knowledge. Some spoke of absolute power. The only constant was great boredom. Anything they wanted to learn they already knew.

Samael was the exception. He was the self-proclaimed master of time. He had appeared to drown out the futility of his title with his hobby of interacting with Assiahan creatures. While his own time-span was limitless, anything in that world was fragile and short-lived. Samael appeared to take great pleasure in seeing a world completely at the mercy of his own domain.

Samael was also his only teacher. While Satan had given him purpose, Satan didn't instruct him. They both knew that his strength could only grow. His flames raged more powerfully in every instance since his "birth".

But while his power was assured, his confusion was not. Despite his beginning at the ruined plains, his body knew things he didn't. His ability to speak, for one. He had words in his mind and on his lips. He knew what they meant, but didn't understand why he'd say them. Then there were the mishmashes of syllables he'd remember, but spend time just saying.

He had learned that language was an invention of the Assiahans, and that the sounds he knew were from those languages. Samael, who was always enthralled with his favorite Assiahans, would spin tales on end in his language. He would react to Samael's tales in ways that felt familiar, but that he couldn't remember why.

Samael knew many more things than that. He always got the distinct impression that the Lord of Time knew things about him that he deliberately didn't mention. No matter how he threatened, Samael would just smile and warp out of harm's way.

Lucifer was the other who knew things about him, but was even cagier than Samael. Lucifer would likewise obsess on the Assiahans. However, he knew anger when he saw it. He knew that some part of his existence was not anticipated by Lucifer. The sole time they had interacted, Lucifer whispered, "nameless demon".

Samael had laughed his mad cackle, crowing about how Lucifer, the older sibling, was getting jealous over a poor nameless sibling. But in the head of the nameless sibling, he felt that muscle memory and the very first emotion he recognized: anger. The notion of being called "nameless demon" rang in his mind over and over, driving the power of his relentless flames.

It rang again as he stood in the battlefield. Assiah burned around him, bright cities and fields diving into hot blue-green fire. The skies were choked in smoke and mist. His brethren wildly attacked anything that moved, silhouetted shadows lunging from the smoke's shadows at the frightened rabbits. No prior global attack had been planned like this before, or so he had been told. He knew his existence made this possible.

He was a demon. He was Satan's blood. He would carry out his father's plan.

And he didn't need a name.

The battlefield looked like hell. Reddish gray smoke and screams enveloped and sharpened his senses. Holding the sword, the only part of him that he had always known, he reached out with the flames and suffocated the enemy force in bitter white smoke. He was the only one who could see through, and cut down all who stood in his path. Blood coated his vessel until the screams had gone and the smoke had dissipated, revealing hundreds of badly burned bodies.

The demon half-sighed of boredom. The gore helped but the lack of challenge distracted him. The exorcist's fighting power had dropped dramatically in the time he had returned to Assiah. His initial foes were tough. Now they were sending teams of weaklings against him, hoping a mob could achieve what skill had failed to do.

Fools, all of 'em.

Letting his sword fall, he walked over the bodies, inspecting each carefully. He saw one move. Possibly my only challenge today, he grumbled. He lazily walked over to the exorcist – a woman, from the looks of it – covering her burned chest and arm.

"Mind telling me what seal you used to protect yourself that well?" he asked. The woman's pupils shrank and she began coughing up blood uncontrollably. "Don't allow yourself to hemorrhage to death. Answer me and I'll end it quickly."

She kept coughing, and he raised his hand to his forehead. Humans were such-

The crackling was the single warning before a wave of sound and light slammed into him. His eyes barely adjusted to the light to see a group of exorcists.

I see, they were behind a barrier!

A net of light fell over him and he heard the thick sound of chanting. He tore and burned the net but it held fast and dragged him to the floor. He heard cheering.

He began to laugh.

"Is this all? Is this really it?!"

The fire, so tied to his inner being, ran loose. The ground he stood on liquefied as he stood and he walked from the trap. The net fell, discharged and useless. The exorcists were all suffocating, but the demon was curious. Which one had devised such a clever trap?

He wheeled around to an exorcist that was sneaking behind him with a mask. He swept the flames under his enemy's footing, knocking him down, the knife thudding against the dirt. As the exorcist started reaching for a gun, he stepped on the hand. Despite the soft crunch of bone and smell of searing flesh that told him the severity, his opponent only shook slightly and slightly whimpered. The lack of screaming made him smile slightly. This interrogation was going to be interesting.

He pulled off the mask and was surprised to see that this exorcist was younger than the others. Maybe his father's enemies had started to recruit children.

"Exorcist," he stated. "What kind of net was that? Did you seriously think that it could hold me? I advise you take your hand as a sign of my sincerity when I say I don't appreciate false answers."

The exorcist's head suddenly snapped up to look at him. He waited for the rejection that he had heard so many times before.

But it was off. This exorcist was staring at him strangely, as if about to break into tears. Cut that, the exorcist was crying. Give me a break, he thought. I just want a little intel, nothing more. Sheezus, does the sight of me scare you so much? The Order was definitely recruiting wimps.

"Brother…"

What was that? Brother? Oh great, this goes beyond wimpy. He's gone stark-raving nuts.

"Well, I don't see your 'brother' here, kiddo. Now will you tell me what I want to know or is one broken arm not enough?"

That got a reaction. The exorcist suddenly glared and ground his teeth. "Damn them," he muttered.

"I'll take that as a resounding 'yes, break my other arm'," the demon chortled, stepping on the exorcist's elbow.

Suddenly his own foot became coated in blue fire. Wha? The demon jumped away. Impossible, he hadn't done that. The flames never escaped his control. His frustration accompanied a sudden pain in his temples.

The exorcist started to stand up, moving onto one knee with the unbroken arm. The exorcist groaned as he moved while the demon rubbed his forehead. Despite his headache he wanted to take down this insolent exorcist once he had enjoyed his pointless fight. The fact that the brat could even move surprised him. "That's a pretty painful set of injuries you got there. I'm impressed. Well, I can fight some mo-"

The exorcist raised his head and the demon could see his eyes – an almost identical copy of his blue irises dancing with fire stared back at him, reddened with tears.

"What the hell…? Who are you?" The demon couldn't move or even turn his eyes away. That couldn't be… only Satan and I have that! There's no one else.

"I'm so sorry brother." The exorcist started walking towards him. "I'm sorry for what's been done to you. I've wanted to see you again. I've just wanted to see you."

"Stand back!" the demon released all the fire he'd held back. The blue flames enveloped his enemy, who continued undeterred. His head hurt at the buzzing and low hum in his ears. He was still paralyzed and at the exorcist's mercy. "Come another step closer and I'll kill you!"

"Can't you hear me?" the exorcist persisted, passing through the blue fire as if it didn't exist. "Can't you hear my voice?"

The buzzing exploded into a cacophony. Sounds and noise overrode his hearing, a thousand voices. He closed his eyes in pain, willing the noise to stop, stop, STOP!

A hand grabbed his head.

"Brother. Rin. REMEMBER!"

The images went barreling through his mind, sounds and smells and feelings all at once. Things he had seen himself do, things his body knew how to do and the why of it all, everything pulling him down down down into a relentless stream of information. He might have been screaming but didn't realize it. He struggled against the memories, pushing him into the world of his senses. At the time he felt like his mind was about to burst.

Then it was silent.

He was in a field of black. A world of nothing. From the distance, the exorcist approached.

"It's been a while, Rin," Yukio half-smiled.

"It has?" he wondered (aloud?).

"Yeah. Almost like years. Sorry for not calling you earlier"

"Oops. Didn't realize so much time passed."

Yukio looked down, swallowing. "Don't stay out so late next time, alright?"

He was back at the battlefield, head against the ground. The sky was dark gray and the world was quiet. He looked around, seeing the exorcist collapsed beside him, dully snoring.

"You're my younger brother; I'll always be here for you!"

"I'm sorry too Yukio. Sorry it took me so long to get back home." A feeling, wetness on his cheeks… tears.

You were here for me.

A/N: Wrote this two years ago. Completed it last year. Uploading it now. If my writing was unclear, the story starts as an AU where Satan succeeded in stealing Rin from Fujimoto and Rin lost his memories after entering the Gehenna Gate.