Dark Sketch 2

"On Being Alone"

I have never been alone. It's something that very few people realize, I think, even among my tamers. It's not their fault, of course, and I'm grateful for the chance to simply be alive, but...

...But it's sometimes a little hard to deal with.

I mean, what do you do when you know you're simply half of some wannabe-God's creation? It's not pretty when you get down to the details, especially if the intentioned other half of you is someone like Krad. Does that mean I'm more like Krad? Or that we are in complete opposition? That he has bits and pieces of 'me' that are not me and have never been me, but were intentioned to be 'us' as a 'me.' Confusing, huh?

That's also why I don't bother voicing these thoughts to anyone. Fourteen-year-old boys aren't really the brightest crayons in the box usually and they have this thing called puberty that may or may not have already happened. Either way, they are not the correct people to voice these kinds of thoughts too. Boys at that age have enough going on without my interference, I've learned.

But I still wonder about it. Certainly, not to the extent that Krad dreams of having his own body. He'd kill his own family for it, his own tamer.

But then, I doubt Krad sees his tamer as family. Probably more like a jailer. I bet if he were nicer in the first place, he'd have more time out and about like I do. Sure, my tamers get annoyed every so often when I jump in and take control... especially when I show off how much their current crush fancies me instead. But the point is that I'm not a bad guy, so I'm allowed.

Or maybe they just can't stop me?

I guess you could argue it either way or both. I'm nicer or stronger or both than Krad. It sounds believable to me. Especially the both part.

Technically, Krad and I must have been together once before we had tamers. I don't remember it, and I bet he doesn't either, but for us to be halves of each other, that means we must have been one whole first. I mean, can you be born as a half?

...I don't think we qualify as Siamese twins.

But it's not like I'm a twin with my tamers either. (First of all, only two people can be twins and I've had lots of tamers. More than septuplets or whatever, and after that point, I think they just start calling them 'multiple births' or something.) We can't separate, but at least I have the ability to keep my thoughts to myself. The closest I can get to being truly separate is when my tamer's sleeping. It's weird, but true that we sleep at different times. I can't possibly begin to say how many classes I've slept through in the last hundred years just so I can stay up at night to go out to visit some pretty girl or just think my own thoughts without my hand taking notes.

You might say that it's like being alone then, except I bet no one else who actually gets to be alone with himself wonders if or when the other will wake up. That's always a bit of a damper on dating girls that my tamer doesn't really know about. Having a tamer wake up when you're just about to kiss the girl makes for an awkward scene, trust me. I barely had enough charm—me with barely enough charm!—to keep her from leaving right then. And if kissing the girl was difficult with interference like that, I don't want to imagine the awkwardness of anything further.

That's another big damper on my career. It's not really fair that I'm known as a womanizer, but because I'm trapped with a fourteen-year-old, there's no way I can get very far without... well, without the poor boy dying of embarrassment or awkwardly excited from voyeurism. The issue is that I'm not as young as my tamer and I'm don't get any younger. I'm not really getting older either. As a work of art, I never had to go through that awkward stage of a teenage boy myself.

Key word there is 'myself.' Because I've had to go through that awkward stage every time I wake up to a new Niwa boy. Believe me, it gets old. It gets old very quickly. In fact, I got annoyed the first time I had to deal with a fourteen-year-old and his raging teenage hormones. The neighbor's daughter wasn't even that pretty.

But if I had to, I'd place myself mentally at age twenty in people years and just stay there. I'm not really a person, so it doesn't fit exactly and most reporters and fans stick my looks somewhere between seventeen and eighteen anyway. And that's right at the age where being alone would be really, really nice. Or, at least being alone with one person of your choice.

And there's just one more thing. I never get a choice. I just show up, thieve some art, give love advice, maybe kiss a girl or two, and then disappear once the boy makes up his mind. It's all about him. But who's the one with all the fans lining up to the building I send warnings to? Who's the one with his face in the paper? Who's the one with the brains and the ability to get the job done? Why yes, that's me. And who stays clueless and unknown? Yeah, that'd be the tamer.

I know, I know. Life's not fair. It's not fair for me, and it isn't fair to anyone else, so why should I complain? I may not have my own body, but at least I'm alive, right?

...I'm just saying it might be nice to live a little.

So, here I tried to keep more of Dark's flippant tone, while still trying to address issues that would become quickly apparent for anyone in his position. Did it work? And yes, I know, in the anime when Daisuke gets trapped by the Secondhand of Time, Dark gets the body all to himself. Let's just say this happens BEFORE that. :D

Please R and R, folks.