A/N: For the March round of D.Gray-man flashfics on LiveJournal. Spoilers for recent-ish chapters.

Enjoy!

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yang/yin

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Let's have the last dance, Exorcist.

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His eyes did not open. There was nothing to see.

Nor were there sounds, or smells, or anything touching his skin.

There was nothing.

The nothing was endless.

It had no borders, shadows, or light, or anything.

It wasn't even properly dark.

It was just nothing, and that was it.

But wait-- it was no longer truly nothing. He was aware of the nothing. Therefore, in the nothing there was now a something that was aware of the nothing. That something, that small point of existence in the fathomless dark, annulled the nothing by being a something.

...Thinking about it much longer or deeper than that would make his head hurt, if he had one. Which, at the moment, he did not, so it was a moot point.

The something's name was Tyki-Myk.

He came into existance in Portugal on a Sunday afternoon, October the third, 1743. Fourteen years later he awakened as a reincarnation of an aspect of Noah when he killed his closest friend just for the pleasure of watching him bleed. The hundred-odd years since then have been spent searching out fragments of Innocence and destroying them as well as their wielders, teaching his immortal older sister arithmetic, and working in a construction crew with a handful of ignorant mortals he'd befriended. He appeared to have a split personality-- one which was dark, sadistic, and seemingly free of anything resembling a conscience, and one which was kindly, easygoing, and disgracefully unkempt.

These were the facts which defined his existence from the outside.

He remembered them, but like he would remember something once read in a book. They did not seem to apply to him, this voiceless knowing in the heart of the void. So, he sat with the darkness and waited until his mind made sense of events.

It probably took some time. It was nigh-on-impossible to reckon the passage of time in that un-place, but experience told him that he did not have the gift of instant comprehension.

In any case, time passed-- or didn't-- and he understood.

Allen Walker, he thought wryly. I might have known.

The truth was, Tyki-Myk did not have two personalities. He had two souls-- one which belonged solely to him, a gentle-hearted Portuguese carpenter, and another which was a fragment of the soul of Noah (beloved of God, once upon a time). Always before they had existed together, with the soul of Noah in symbiotic submission to his own. At times he gave it free rein to wreak what havoc and shed what blood it would, in exchange for leaving his breakable but beloved human friends alone.

Noah killed for the Earl. Tyki lived for his friends. The system worked well... or at least it had, up until now.

He wished suddenly to have his mouth back. He wanted to smile wryly and chuckle at the poor Exorcist boy's misfortune at the chosen function of his new weapon.

After being stricken down by it, he understood what the sword was for.

It was, appropriately enough, an Exorcist's sword. It was doubtless meant to burn away the demon, leaving the human soul untouched. Genius. It might even have worked, if not for one thing that the boy could not possibly have known.

That was that the piece of Noah's soul did not reside on a level with Tyki's own. He had it sealed away in a far deeper place, where simple exorcism could not possibly reach it. Allen's sword, being rather more powerful than most run-of-the-mill exorcism devices, managed to find the Noah within him and drag it out... but it did not have the power to pull it all the way out.

The result was this-- the Noah on the surface, fully in control for the first time since its awakening all those decades ago, and Tyki asleep in the dank hole within himself he'd dug for the Noah.

Irony.

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Time passed.

Or maybe not.

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Tyki-Myk wondered how things were going on the outside. The Noah was very powerful, and likely on a murderous rampage to celebrate its newfound freedom. Had it been anyone else but Allen Walker fighting him, Tyki had little doubt that they would already be dead.

However. It was Allen facing him, and if there was one thing Tyki had learned by now, it was that the boy was tenacious to a fault. Crush his Innocence to powder, cut a hole in his heart, leave his body in ruins in a freezing forest in the middle of the night, and he'll be back after you a few weeks later looking better than ever. He was far too stubborn and driven to die from something like this.

He would be wounded, though. The Noah would make him bleed and glory in it-- it was the incarnation of the pleasure aspect, after all, and there was nothing which gave it more joy than blood and the death that followed it-- and it would break him a little, but in the end, he would win.

It disturbed Tyki a little how sure he was of that. It was like he had more faith in the boy that he did in the other half of his own soul, and that was just a tad discomfiting.

But then, there had always been something different about him. His soul was... brighter, somehow, than everyone else's.

The Noahs were, in many ways, diluted humans. Most of them were controlled by mere shreds of a long-dead spirit, and the long years of near-immortality wore away at what real human soul was left beneath. They were preserved copies of humans, with the form and appearance of real souls, but they were corroded away until what was left looked human but was really quite far from it.

Allen, in Tyki's eyes, was the opposite. His lifespan was probably shorter than most normal humans because he seemed to pack a moment-and-a-half's worth of living into every moment. It was like someone had stood the life he was born with on end and jumped up and down a couple of times on top of it until it was crunched down into something smaller, but more intense, like packing too much gunpowder into too small a bullet. It made him practically glow to the keen eyes of the Noah.

On the train, Tyki hadn't known his name but even without the jacket and the deformed hand he would have known Allen was an Exorcist. It ran just under his skin like a light seen out the corner of the eyes... almost visible, but impossible to pin down.

Then again in the forest, he'd known the moment he stumbled on his that this was his quarry. Asking his name had been just a formality.

Boy, are you perchance Allen Walker?

Tyki had enjoyed killing him-- the Noah in him insured that he enjoyed killing most anything-- but had not enjoyed the knowledge afterwards that the boy was dead.

It seemed a terrible waste. Tyki's soul, the untainted part above the ancient poison, had really liked him. He'd seemed the sort of person who would make a truly wonderful friend... the likes of the one Tyki had killed during the madness of the Noah's first awakening. He'd never found someone since then he could accept in that capacity whole-heartedly... until now.

Allen Walker had survived and come to-- well now, wasn't that interesting. What exactly had the boy been trying to do? Exorcising the Noah would make Tyki an ordinary human being. He wasn't sure what that would do to him, since he'd been alive for far longer than any normal human should have been.

Perhaps he would would wither away to the dust he should really have become decades ago.

Perhaps-- and this was likely what was behind Allen's rationale-- he would simply pick up where he'd left off, a twenty-eight year-old man in the prime of his life, truly alone in his body and heart for the first time since birth.

The boy was a bloody saint.

More than that, he had the gumption and raw power to actually back up the suicidal ideals that made him try to find salvation for a Noah.

Tyki didn't even have to try to know that he wouldn't be making it out of this hole by himself. He'd dug it with his own hands, so to speak, and knew just how effective the seal he'd created was. Now that he was on the inside of it, he could beat on its walls until he exhausted himself, but nothing would happen. There was nothing to affect in here.

There were only two ways he could possibly get out.

One was for the Noah to let him out, and God would shake hands and have a friendly game of croquette with the Son of Morning before that happened.

The second was for someone to defeat the Noah from outside, at which point control of his body would default back to him.

Tyki relaxed and wished for lungs, this time, so he could take a deep breath and have a good, long, satisfying sigh.

It was good that time was hard to tell in here. If it wasn't, he would probably go quite mad by the time anything of interest happened outside. As it was, all there was for him to do was sit back, relax, and wait for Allen to rescue him.

Because rescue him the boy would. Tyki was more sure of that than he had been of anything for a very long time. Even if it was just to eradicate the threat of the Noah, Allen would track it down and fight it and do what needed to be done. And when he did, Tyki would be free again... possibly forever.

What then?

Well. Who knew?

Tyki would either return to his old life with the Noah under his control, he would be a human, or he would be dead.

Knowing Allen, the latter option was the least likely. The boy would walk through hell to save one human life, and he was very aware that Tyki still counted as one of those. Allen would probably die to save him like the crazy saint he was.

I'm waiting for you, Tyki thought wryly, as if Allen could actually hear him. Don't let me down now.

The blackness did not relent, but Tyki felt unexpectedly a bit better. Perhaps this was why the humans made such a big deal out of trusting other people? Because it made one feel just the slightest bit less gloomy about one's future prospects (or lack thereof)?

He mentally shrugged and began composing humorous poetry on imaginary parchment. The Earl had a penchant for limericks, and no one but Tyki really had any touch for them. It wasn't like there was anything better to do in here.

I'm counting on you... Exorcist.

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A/N: What do you think the chances are that I got it right (in regards to Tyki's current situation)? I'll laugh if he really is whiling away the time inside his own spirit waiting for Allen to rescue his loser butt. XD