What is this I don't even.
Always been pretty interested in D. Gray-Man, and I finally decided over the past week to catch up on it. And read about a hundred and sixty or so chapters in a day. Holy crapcakes, it's awesome. I cried so, so many times (dammit kanda stop traumatizing me). But really, I think my favorite character is Tyki. He's intensely interesting, and I love his duality (also those nerd-glasses and suspenders are oh so cute). So, I wrote this to feel his character out a bit. Just in case I ever decide to write something more.
This and a plotbunny running around made me decide that Tyki and Lenalee would totally be friends if they could. They are a bit alike, going from this drabble :)
Sometimes, he wondered what it would have been like if he hadn't been chosen as a Noah. Would things have been different for him? For the rest of the clan? For the Black Order? How would it all have changed if Tyki Mikk had simply continued with his life as a cheerful, sarcastic, card-shark of a Portuguese migrant worker?
He supposed not much would have. He would still be train-hopping with the boys, with Momo, Clark, and Eeez. Still working at mines and scrap-yards. Still drinking stale coffee and sharing lukewarm stew with his companions, still some of the best food he'd ever had. Still cheating unsuspecting men – and the occasional women – out of their money and clothes, laughing at their 'bad luck'. Still calling and calling his brother, hoping that this time, he'd answer.
And his brother would still be a Noah. He'd changed first, after all, and even if Tyki never remembered, Sheril would. That's when his older brother had broken off contact with him. Of course Tyki had been angry, been hurt. After all, who had been the one to protect the two orphans when they were growing up on the streets? Not Sheril. Who had been the one to chase off the bullies and the thieves? Not Sheril. Who had been the one honing his poker skills and his sleight of hand to a razor's edge, painstakingly pulling in the couple thousand euro by euro, so Sheril could go to school and make something of himself? Certainly not the elder brother. And who had even changed his own last name to a bastardization of Mikkael, their father's, so the new government official's reputation wouldn't be soured? All Tyki, of course.
Apparently, the blood of Noah ran much thicker than the simple human blood of family. Tyki had only even found out about Sheril Kamelot's marriage to a Miss Tricia Welch, and their subsequent adoption of a little girl named Road through the newspaper. The man hadn't even bothered to invite is own little brother to his wedding. But even though he was angered and hurt, Tyki let it go. It just wasn't like him to hold a grudge. Besides, he had the boys. He had his life, his cards, his own free will. That's what mattered in the end.
The day the stigmata appeared, his brother finally answered the phone, almost expecting Tyki to call. In retrospect, he probably had. The Earl had probably told him his brother was the next to remember. That very night, his brother arrived at the work site in a pitch-black carriage. Tyki probably never forgot that night. When his mind wandered to the thoughts of what life might have been like, this memory always came to the surface. His brother, roughly grabbing his wrist and tearing the bandages off his forehead. His black eyes – only now they were melting into yellow-gold – lighting up in an almost manic glee. Sheril almost throwing Tyki to the ground as Tyki's head exploded into a blazing firestorm of agony. Lying there, in the rain that had begun to fall, staring at his now coffee-colored hand with eyes that no longer needed the thick, ugly glasses that had plagued him most of his life. Only then had Sheril's face turned into one of concern, of familial caring. He'd knelt down, murmuring words most likely meant to be comforting, but Tyki hadn't heard a one. Instead, he'd sat himself up and promptly broken his brother's nose with a well-aimed fist to the face. As cordial and friendly as their relationship now was, the two brothers had really never forgiven each other for that night. And that, Tyki supposed, was one thing that might have been different if he'd never joined his brother as a Noah.
He still kept to his old life after that. He avoided as much as possible the odd little dreamworld Road created as a meeting-place. Stuck to the trains, the mines, the cards. But he could never refuse the call when it came, and he changed out of one skin into another; Tyki the drifter became Tyki the Noah. He'd lost his free will to the Earl of Millennium, and hadn't even noticed when it had gone.
He couldn't see why the Earl wanted to destroy the humans. Really, he liked humans. So diverse, so interesting. Sure, they may be less than the Noah, but hadn't the Noah been human at one point themselves? He didn't understand the prejudice, and really didn't care to. He just did his job and got on with life. It didn't matter to him if the stains he washed off of his hands at night were dirt and oil, or someone else's blood. So long as the Earl kept out of his human life, and his human life kept out of his Noah business, he was happy.
But at the same time…he didn't want to be a part of that darker life. He was the Noah of Pleasure, he would reason to himself when his thoughts strayed down that treasonous road. What pleasure was to be found in a barren world, what joy to be taken from empty wastelands? If there were no one but the chosen Noahs, there would be no one to play poker with, no one to cheat or drink with or laugh alongside. The others would be there, of course, but it just wouldn't be the same. It was the richness and diversity of the human race that made his life so pleasurable- where would he be if it was all gone?
So he would sit alone, smoking a cigarette until it burned to a stub and after, thinking these thoughts. What might life have been like, if he weren't a Noah? Why did he have to be a Noah? Why did the human race have to be erased? Why, why, why?
He supposed he might blame Allen Walker, the cheating boy with the white hair and cursed eye, for his sudden interest in altogether unhealthy thoughts for a Noah. The boy was the first time his two lives had merged. A boy he had spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon with, getting outplayed and out-cheated at cards became another name on a list to die, another face twisted with pain and fear as a white-gloved hand slid through his chest and a butterfly did its work. That hadn't really bothered him. Neither had the boy's survival. He'd just shrugged and written the kid off as an especially tough little brat.
Until the boy had shoved a sword through his chest, and he felt his Noah self being tugged out of him with a sensation of something ripping. He didn't remember much of anything after that, and had only woken up days later in Sheril's mansion, his entire chest swathed in bandages and Road crying sloppy, wet tears of furious joy all over him. When he'd seen himself in a mirror not long afterwards, he'd almost fallen over in shock. No longer could he tell the difference between his Noah form and his human one, save for the golden eyes and stigmata. He couldn't go back to his little wandering family, he knew that. And so the leash grew shorter, the other end still clutched in the Earl's gloved hand.
But he'd had a taste of a humanity he'd thought long gone, thanks to Allen Walker, and it had affected him. He felt it in his bones, in the scars that refused to stop aching. The child that held the 14th Noah had shaken him to his core, and it didn't bother him anywhere near as much as it probably should have. These traitorous thoughts that flitted through his mind like stray Tease fascinated him- he sat playing with them, rolling them around his head for hours. He wasn't the only one, either; Road had become just as fascinated with oddball thoughts of her own, though Tyki wasn't quite sure of the content besides Allen.
So he sat, and he smoked, and he thought. And really, as much as he knew there was no going back from the path he was walking down, as much as he knew that his death loomed in the distance as sure as the night would end, that last hand he would play with Allen Walker, part of his still nursed a very small wish. A wish that things would turn out alright for him, that that last hand would be a lucky one, and he could quietly go back to his human life and pretend it was all a nightmare.
But that was a silly little wish. He would always come to that wish, in the end, and there he would stop the thoughts. After all, he was Tyki Mikk, Noah of Pleasure and the Millennium Earl's loyal servant. He didn't have any room for childish fancies like that, or for any of those pointless 'why's and 'what-if's. He would stand up from his chair and toss away his cigarette, and head off to some business or other.
But childish fancies and silly wishes never hurt anyone, did they?