Title: Unself-Portrait
Author: Jordanna Morgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author's consent.
Rating/Warnings: G.
Characters: Daisuke.
Setting: The day of Dark's awakening in Daisuke.
Summary: Daisuke's self-portrait was somehow coming out wrong.
Disclaimer: They belong to Yukiru Sugisaki. I'm just playing with them.
Notes: Written for the prompt word "Self-Portrait" at Fan Flashworks, because it just begged for this usage, and I haven't written a presentable "DNAngel" fic in a while. Although it doesn't really feature my beloved Dark, this little Daisuke study was unexpectedly fun.

Daisuke's self-portrait was somehow coming out wrong.

It was a simple exercise he had been given in art class: to draw a sketch of what he thought he would look like in five years. The boy expected it wouldn't be much of a challenge. Of course he would be taller by his late teens, and his face would be more mature, but he couldn't see any of the important traits about him changing. He would always be redheaded, brown-eyed, a little bit unremarkable… and the Niwa family features he had so strongly inherited certainly weren't going to change much.

So he found it a puzzle as, with each stroke of his pencil, Daisuke recognized less about his own intended portrait of his future self.

Eyes with a more exotic slant than his own; eyes that held mysterious depths, as if they had seen far more than he could dream of experiencing. Darker hair, worn in a longer and more unruly cut than he thought he would ever care for. Lips curved in a confident, complacent smile—almost a smirk—that was surely the very opposite of his shy nature. A nonchalant elegance, a grace that he couldn't imagine growing into from his present awkwardness.

Only the fundamental Niwa features were the same: familiar lines about the face that he knew in himself, in his mother, and especially in pictures he had seen of his grandfather as a young man. Without a doubt, their blood was shared by this person he was watching his hand depict.

And yet, the rest of it—

It wasn't him. The feeling, the instinctive sense of his subject that flowed through Daisuke's fingers and onto the paper, translating into all the intangible details that expressed character… somehow, it portrayed someone he was sure he could never become.

Who was this stranger his mind's eye insisted on conjuring when he tried to envision his future?

Suddenly, unaccountably frustrated—and perhaps just a little unnerved—Daisuke balled up the sketch before him, and took a deep breath.

…It was a stupid exercise, anyway. Besides, there were far more important things on his mind. He had so much living to do right now, instead of pondering what he would be like in a few years.

It was his fourteenth birthday… and he had finally determined that today, after school, he would confess his feelings to Miss Risa.

Hearing the bell ring in the hall, Daisuke quickly gathered his pencils and stuffed them into his bag. He rose from his desk, and eyed the single wadded ball of paper that remained there for a long moment, before at last he picked it up as well.

On his way out the door, he dropped the crumpled sketch into a wastepaper basket.

2016 Jordanna Morgan