Author's Note: So, yeah, another Yami fic, written on the spur of the moment. This is based entirely on the anime; it is very possible this conflicts with information set out in the manga. I don't have the manga, so deal. Anyway, just a little introspective dealie with everyone's favorite albino bastard. I really don't have the slightest idea where this came from.
The fanfic muse feeds on reviews and insanity, so please contribute to the keep-the-muse-away-from-the-bizarre-ideas fund. Pretty please? (I respond to reviews, and reviewers will be thanked on the next chapter of my other Yami fic, "It's Never Simple.")
Ah, before I forget. Yami no Matsuei and related characters no belong to me. I don't make any money from this and I don't have any money to be sued for, mmmkay?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The quality of his own thoughts troubled him. Oh, not all the time, not even most of the time. He could go several weeks, sometimes even months, without having one of those jarring, almost alien thoughts. Usually, his attention was focused elsewhere with such intensity that he simply couldn't be distracted by something so… trivial.
But there came times, usually in the small hours of the night, when it seemed like he couldn't think of anything else. That's when he started wondering how it had come to this.
He wondered when saving lives had just become a useful tool, a means of concealing his true nature and aims. He wondered if he had been made this way, or if something had just been let out of him that had always existed; if he was more like his accursed brother than even he cared to admit. He wondered when his soul had shriveled up and died, and when he finally stopped giving a damn.
These nagging thoughts made him uncomfortable, and he acted to stifle them as soon as he reasonably could. Once he started brooding on the issue, there was nothing for it but to try to take his mind off of it. An hour or two of quiet discussion sometimes was enough, but there were times when it took something more involved or… physical. For the large part, he was successful. But only when they worked their way up into his conscious mental processes. He couldn't do anything about the dreams.
The dreams were even rarer than the conscious thoughts, but despite that (or maybe because of it), they left a deeper impact. Usually, he only suffered them if he was ill (very seldom, but it did happen) or if he'd worked himself to exhaustion (slightly more common, but not a regular occurrence); there didn't seem to be any individual triggers that he could identify and avoid. They were fragmentary things at best, but that was, after all, the nature of the beast. Knowing that didn't make them any more tolerable.
He dreamed of a boy who would never even consider hurting someone else, let alone assaulting and killing perfect strangers on a regular basis. Someone who didn't relish the sight, smell, and feel of blood or enjoy inflicting pain in all its various forms. Someone who didn't play mind games or manipulate people in labyrinthine plots that inevitably led to their destruction. The worst times were when he dreamed of what might have been, in a different life: baffling that old enemy death as opposed to morbid experiments that had long ago ceased to have meaning. People he cared about instead of his solitary existence, looking for the next disposable pawn. Healing rather than destroying.
The dreams were confusing, irritating, and to an extent, almost frightening. They always put him out of sorts, and he usually responded by taking it out on the first convenient person to cross his path. Somehow, that put him back on surer emotional ground, and almost always warded him against further dreams for the time being. In any case, it made them easier to forget.
He didn't know why he had these dreams and errant thoughts, and that was a good deal of what bothered him about them. He prided himself on understanding psychology better than all but a very few experts, but he didn't understand his own mind. That threw him off balance, and made it even harder to deal with these aberrant states effectively.
He never spoke of these troublesome matters to anyone, not even Oriya, although his friend could probably make a good guess. Oriya understood him as no one else did, but that in and of itself brought a new concern to the fore. Would there come a time when he turned on Oriya too? Would he one day betray the only person he was remotely close to, just like he methodically betrayed everyone else? He honestly didn't know the answer to that, or if he even cared.
It was just another in a series of questions he didn't know why he asked. All he could do about it was to pretend that he hadn't, as per usual.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Note Addendum: Dude, no clue. Muraki is one of those people I love to hate, and I firmly believe he is to be held responsible for pretty much everything bad that happens in the series (including the events of the Devil's Trill arc). Therefore, this is a much more sympathetic take on him than I frankly thought I was capable of. I don't get it either.