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AN: Just a quick Satan-POV oneshot. I'm a little jammed up with some writer's block on my main story, so I'm hoping this will get me moving on my next chapters. This was intended to be an exercise in writing something a little out of my usual style and free from the pressure of continuing on to some intricate plot.

This is in the same AU as my fic "Birthright" but it does not rely on any plot elements from that story. The AU is in the distant past and is mostly manga compliant thus far anyways (minus OCs) so no need to read for this to make sense. (For those of you who are reading it, there is a bit of a clue as to what's coming up in that story sprinkled in here).

Manga spoilers incoming!

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At first there was nothing. Nothingness upon nothingness in a void of pitch black.

Then, very suddenly, like a clap of thunder in a midnight storm, there was everything. In a frenzy, it shook and danced, separating and recombining at a rate I have never felt again. It was the power of God unleashed, the true God who damned me. This is his realm and his whim, and that was his strength.

But, I can't remember this well because at that time I was not yet myself, and was instead many selves smeared together in a muddled brume.

For eons, time passed, a molasses-like drip of unknown magnitude, with only the heartbeat of dying stars to count its passage.

I was something like one of them, these ambiguous clouds of dust and space, full of everything but so poorly defined. The universe itself demands disorder, but for disorder to exist so, too, must order. We must define ourselves. We must take shape. We must become, ourselves, a single star from the cloud of dust. Forced, eventually, to take shape and bear children.

I formed and grew larger than I myself could contain, the same as the elderly stars that dominated the early ages. I wandered aimlessly but bound to some great force, just as they.

With no one to count the days or years or ages, there was nothing else to do but be.

But time did pass. Even when no one was around to feel it, it moved. The stars aged, and when they died, they were born again with their children, the planets, who followed them loyally through the ever-growing universe.

It was through death and recombination, many great explosions of incalculable chaos, that order and individuals rose from the mayhem.

It was through my death, my great explosion—my fall—that my children could rise themselves born of my dust. That is my power, my creation.

Even when they formed and settled, when they were themselves and could walk among God's men, in my cursed, great state, I could still not see myself.

But when my sons walked the earth and passed into material space, then, finally, I could feel. There were the heartbeats of the many planets, orbiting their beloved stars with a lazy precision. The great breathing of the Earth's seasons, in perfect harmony with its dance around the sun, when the trees and greenery would rise and when they would sleep. Upon this tiny planet I could feel many more heartbeats, so fast in comparison to the others I had known that they hummed a chaotic melody, all at the command of the Earth, at the command of the sun, at the command of the galaxy and God.

They were faceless, indistinguishable, but a beautiful feeling taken together. I wanted everything to be together forever.

This was myself for millennia. I could feel the universal melody, and I had only a single carnal desire for harmony and togetherness.

Finally, one day, I heard. I could hear in the human sense of the word, not just the vibration of things, but the sensation of a single pitch, appreciated alone.

It was, I later learned, a laugh.

It was so novel, so intoxicating. I rushed to its source. The little black-haired girl. When I went to her, I popped in a flash of heat and wisped away, but I knew she had felt me. From then on, I could sense her, and I could show myself to her and she would sense me.

Her name is Yuri. But I don't need her anymore.

After that touch of perception, I was never like before again. Sometimes, in an exhilarating rush, I might materialize for a moment and the feeling would evanesce, misting away as quickly as the sensory flood had come. I would fall again and again back into my hazy state, but I had a new carnal desire. I wanted to be. I wanted a form. And though I couldn't think or plan or scheme, I pushed forward mindlessly on the instinct of my one desire like a moth through the night, searching for light.

I could not hold together my self for very long, but I became capable of recognition of myself so often, so powerfully that not even the curse of God could hold me.

And when I heard the little black-haired girl laugh for me and call to me, I could hold on for a moment longer to my mind before it scattered into the fog. I could fixate on this girl and, in doing so, hold myself together. I could rise from the void of selflessness. I could be me.

When I could feel her soul, grasp her person in my mind, I could have my own, wonderful self. So I obsessed over her, following her relentlessly. More desperately invested in her tiny, meaningless life than anything I ever had been.

Naturally, I loved her madly.

But I don't need her anymore.

I knew before I finally came here that human hearts, they beat so fast. Their lives are fleeting.

When I could keep my mind whole, I wondered what I would do when she was gone, when I couldn't follow her any longer. How would I gather myself then?

Of course, she was chosen for a dangerous life, but this only solidified my fixation and my frantic search for a vessel.

Unlike my sons, my cursed self would never incarnate through ego and force of will alone, but it didn't matter. Driven by my need to take form and meet this girl, I brought myself to Assiah, purposefully, deliberately.

My few sporadic seconds spent in a body were even more fascinating than the self I had come to be. Even with nothing of interest in that dark, quiet tube, there were things to hear and feel and see. Even to see darkness and nothing is still to see.

But the body rejected me many, many times. The discomfort of pain and aching pushed me away for some time, but I would always watch the girl and be driven to try again.

When I secured my long-awaited vessel, she was with me almost every day. There was so much to learn.

I came to find I didn't know anything at all. I didn't know it was already too late. That the man who all her life made her angry, who made her cry and who even moved to harm her had somehow taken her heart.

I don't need her anymore.

I am finally myself without her. I don't need her anymore.

Besides, I am everything. That man is an imperceptible hiss in the sea of it all, he barely contributes to the vast harmony of the universe even in the prime of his life, at the peak of his power, and his vibration will not be missed when it disappears.

But Yuri's laugh will be missed. There will be a great, searing silence in the melody of things when she is gone.

But I don't need her anymore.

She is a traitor. She abandoned me. She tried to confine me, the star, the sun, the universe. She taught me this new, unbearable pain when she chose to follow that man.

But why? Why, of all the men across the God forsaken Earth, did she have to choose him?

What woman in her right mind would choose that man over a god? She was wrong. Wrong to choose such a man over the ideal partner. The strongest, the most powerful, the most perfect being in all of existence. She is a faulty, disgusting human. She is like all of them. She's like him.

And now she comes to me, crying look in her eyes, pleading and begging for this and that. Worthless. Every one of them. Worthless. A bother.

I don't need you anymore. And now, I'll show you, too.

I barely need to even gesture. Low demons feel compelled by my will and they will see it done.

But everything is stopped.

The little gremlins, snarling and ready to rip apart the little black-haired traitor stay suspended where they are. Her eyes, too scared to watch, stay screwed shut tightly, her mouth open with a silent scream.

Time is stopped and before me, I see my son, straightening his white hat and standing tall before me.

This one is shifty. He is fickle, loyal to only himself.

Smirking as always he tells me with a bow, "What do you require, Father? I've come to provide."

I take a rattling breath through my raw throat and squint at him. He knows already what I need.

A single wheeze devolves into a bloody, hacking cough. This bastard can hold time still for his own body, hold time to protect that vile woman, but not for me?

"You are too strong for even me to hold, Father, but I have an idea—if you'll hear it, that is." He has a flighty tone I can't stand. Entirely too cheerful as I rot before him.

"What?" my voice rasps.

His eyes spark instantly and hold their glimmering sheen when he leans toward me with a smile.

"Lucifer with his clones and elixirs—he can't get you a suitable body," he smirks, triumphant in his supposed knowledge. Before I can strike him in my frustration he continues, "Have you heard of the idea of an immaculate body?"

Wheezing, I protest, "It's not possible. There are no more children of—"

"Oh, but it is and there are! The world—," he paused dramatically as he removed his hat with his irritatingly flamboyant flair. He revealed his face to me more fully, locking eyes with me as he continued, "has changed since your fall."

I am suspicious but it hurts too much.

"Yuri Egin was raised as an orphan. What better way to hide such interesting lineage?" He cautiously approaches. Beside me and very quietly, he tells me, "She's in love, you know…and very recently pregnant."

He seems to enjoy my angry reaction. I feel him buzzing with excitement at my pain. Will he enjoy being completely obliterated, I wonder?

"Humans have obtained great knowledge due to their technological advances in these most recent years." He is still close and unafraid as I glower at him. "It doesn't matter a lick who she's in love with. All that matters is that the brain chemistry is lined up. We could easily make any man or woman the object of her affections," he tells me, still with the devious glint in his eyes.

I can't admit to him that I am intrigued.

"She could just as easily love you, Father," he whispers. "She has the lineage. She is in love. She is already carrying a child. We can easily make it two and you will have a truly perfect body. You could have the coveted immaculate form. All you have to do is take her."

The elixirs, the bodies, the pain and suffering—it could end! I could have her, I could keep her from him. I could have her really and fully. The beautiful dark-haired woman. The only creature who ever held my interest, the anchor of my budding self.

"If you let her live now, you can have it all. Her love, a body, Assiah."

He steps away, and once he is a respectable distance again, he bows to me and replaces his hat.

"Outside of this meeting, I must act in opposition for as long as you align with Lucifer, of course, I hope you'll understand," he says, as he stands up straight before me again.

"I'll leave it to you, Father," he snaps his fingers and disappears in a plume of smoke.

Her scream is back, demons are snarling, pouncing at her once again. Life is back in motion.

I save her, engulfing my minions in hellfire. As swiftly as time returned, I scooped her into the arms of my deteriorating vessel. My fire wraps around us. My excitement at its fever pitch.

This is it. This is everything I have always wanted since I learned desire for anything at all. I can have her. And she's all I need anymore.

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AN: Thanks for reading!

I thought the scene in the manga where Satan threatens/backs off of Yuri so quickly was really strange and (even if this is not what really happened) suspect Meph was involved in that flip. So! I wrote this quick little thing up to satisfy my own curiosity :P

I hope you guys enjoyed and let me know what you think 3