A/N: Kida's mind is split into two different sections, one part of him is our OC and heroine, who is slowly losing awareness of herself and she has fully accepted being Kida, Kida, however, has not fully accepted her as being him, which leads to some chaotic mental rifts inside his mind, which lead the outside world and Izaya specifically, to interpret it as something akin to Dissociative Personality Disorder. I don't specifically know anyone with this disorder, so I'm basing it off what I know from my rapid cycling of mood changes of being bipolar and my imagination.

Now, he doesn't actually have it, but Izaya thinks he does and it's more logical for him to believe he has a disorder rather than actually believe in "impossible" things like reincarnation. This, and it also puts an interesting twist on the whole "OC replaces main character" schtick-most of the time, OC just replaces the lead character. Not so in this one, in this one, Kida still exists and is not happy with this set of events. Think about it, would you like someone else invading your mind, your memories, and your body?

Probably not.

"In the end, I'm realizing, I was never meant to fight on my own."-Ashes Remain

Chapter 10 I don't want to be alone anymore

Izaya frowned as he sat in his office, his thoughts still on the odd and ever-changing behavior of the young boy known as Kida Masaomi. The boy still puzzled him to this day. He found his constant mood swings odd, and at first, he'd regarded it as a possible diagnosis of manic-depressive disorder, or better known as, bipolar disorder.

However, when he'd secretly tested the youth on it, disguising the test, he had come out perfectly normal. He'd tried others, such as borderline personality disorder, autism, etc, and he'd come out normal. However, when he'd tried googling up symptoms of Disassociative Personality Disorder, or DID, he'd been floored by how much the symptoms matched Kida's odd behaviors.

The symptoms were depression (he could recall a time where Kida had suddenly panicked over still being alive and talking about death, his preoccupation with death certainly fit the signs), mood swings, which he definitely fit, lack of sleep (he'd noticed Kida wasn't sleeping and complained of nightmares), anxiety attacks, he could recall a time the fourteen-year-old had come to his door in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and utterly terrified that someone was in his mind and was going to kill him.

He feared for the young boy and pitied him, having a disorder like this was such a troublesome and difficult disorder to understand. People would misjudge him as some sort of violent freak when Kida was the opposite. Kida was a kid who just had a rough life and now he was diagnosed with something like this. He almost didn't want to break the news to the kid.

As he came to notice the signs, he'd noticed that when Kida "switched" personalities, his face would become more emotionless, he'd start reading stuff and start talking in a more deadpan tone and less like a child, more like an adult. On top of that, the "alter" seemed to have a sadistic sense of humor, often toying with Masaomi's sanity.

Izaya didn't like the alter very much. He (why did his mind insist that the alter was female? He had no clue, maybe it was the posture, Masaomi's posture even resembled a female's when this...alter took over.) He was losing it.

Masaomi-kun definitely wasn't transgender, he'd shown no signs of discomfort with his body from a young age and puberty had come and gone, and even though he showed some minor dysphoria and complained a little bit, adolescents tended to complain.

He still couldn't help but shiver as he recalled the way the alter would just stare him down emotionlessly. As if it/he/she, (he was going to settle on he, since unless the alter told him their identity, that's what he was going with), knew everything about him. It didn't seem intimidated by him, either.

Izaya hated the way the alter toyed with Kida's sanity. He wished it would just go away and leave Masaomi-kun alone, he'd come to care about the boy, dammit, and if this alter wasn't helping him, then it had to leave, before it drove Kida over the edge.

Unfortunately, the alter didn't seem willing to leave. That was the problem.

"Masaomi-kun, I was a little worried about you because you wouldn't answer your phone when I called you multiple times. Are you all right?"

"Yeah...I'm fine." His eyes darted back and forth.

"Kida, are you all right?" He asked.

"I'm just fine." He pressed. As he sat down, he looked up at Izaya.

"Izaya..."

Then his expression changed.

"What is it like to die, I wonder?"

"Masaomi-kun?" Izaya asked, a little confused at the blond's strange behavior.

The blond just looked up at him with empty eyes. "I wonder what it's like to die, to lose everything, to never be able to see anyone again, to smile, to laugh, to think about anything. What's that like, Izaya? What do you do if you die? Do you come back? Do you keep on living? I wonder that sometimes."

His way of speaking, his flat tone, none of this sounded like the Masaomi he knew, it was scaring Izaya. He hated to admit it, but he was scared of a child.

"Masaomi, are you sick?" He said, shaking him.

"I'm just saying..." He muttered, "Humans have always wondered about death, is it possible there's another life after this one?"

He turned to look up at him. "I've always wanted to see what it's like...to die." He was smiling.

Just like that, Izaya slapped the teen in the face.

Then he looked up at him. "Uh, Izaya? What happened?"

"Masaomi, you started talking about death all of a sudden, and your face got weird."

"You're kidding, right?" He said, "No way in heck I'd talk about that!"

By the way he was laughing, he was clearly nervous about something.

Because to be quite honest, Kida-kun was not suicidal. He was a cheery, vivacious kid who lived his life to the fullest. It was the last thing he'd ever think of.

"Masaomi-kun, do you have depression?" He asked the boy.

The boy looked at him like he was nuts. "I-I don't get what you're talking about, Izaya, have you lost your mind or something?"

"A few seconds ago, you started discussing death and how you wanted to die." Izaya said.

"I really don't know what you mean."

"Masaomi-kun, have you ever undergone any psychiatric tests?"

The kid just looked at him, totally confused.

"Am I losing my mind?" He muttered.

"You could just be sick, and it could be a fever." Izaya said, more to himself, "I'll take you to the doctor."

Roughly a week after he'd taken Kida to the hospital, the strange "alter" appeared again.

He'd found Kida reading his books. More importantly, his philosophy book, a pretty advanced book.

"Kida-kun, do you like reading now?"

"Uh-huh." He said absently.

"Is this the part where your other personality pops up again?" Izaya joked.

"Sigmund Freud's interesting, isn't he?"

Once again, that same, emotionless tone.

He turned to look at Kida.

His eyes were wide, he looked scared or unnerved by something.

He glanced at his hands, then back at Izaya. "I feel like a corpse...like I should be dead, and yet I'm alive!" He cried, shaking. "Why am I here? I should be dead!"

"Masaomi-kun!" He said, shaking him.

Masaomi looked at him, his eyes filled with a wild fear he'd never seen him have before. "Why am I still alive?" He muttered.

Izaya could only stare, open-mouthed. "Kida-kun, whatever joke this is, I'm getting tired of it. You're here, you're alive, deal with it."

To his disbelief, the teen buried his head in his lap and started sobbing, leaving a bewildered Izaya simply staring at the teen. Maybe he was losing his mind.

Then he'd discovered the thing called DID.

There were millions of people with it. Men, women, children, people of all ages. Though it was a relatively uncommon diagnosis, enough people had it that he could find videos on it.

There was a woman being interviewed about one of her alters, an old man who was a World War I survivor named Walter, when suddenly, her expression changed and she started talking like an old man, her voice even sounded deeper.

"Were you in the war, Walter?"

"Yes," Came a gravelly voice.

"Tell me how your friends died."

"They died from the gas. Then the trenches-we hid in the trenches, and those damned idiots...they perished. I woke to their bodies over mine. They died shielding me. I won an award for being in that cursed war. Then there was another war, but at that point, I was done. I didn't want any part of any more godforsaken wars. I went to work in an office and though it was boring work, it was much better than looking down the barrel of a gun."

The voice, the expressions, every part of this woman looked and sounded like a man now.

A tear cascaded down the woman's cheek.

"I miss them, dammit. I miss all them bastards."

Then, the woman had come back to herself, confused as to what had happened.

Izaya's eyes widened. From the change in expression to the endless confusion, it all fit Masaomi-kun's diagnosis. When he put him through an online test, the results he got were sobering. When he compared Masaomi-kun from several years ago, he got a 5% chance of having it.

Now, when he was fourteen bloody years old, that chance had skyrocketed up to nearly 50%.

Izaya dropped his fatty tuna on the floor, staring at the screen in shock. He'd just assumed Kida was making this all up, but the evidence clearly pointed to Kida-kun having this disorder.

It also said that people tended to have this happen when they were approaching adolescence, like with schizophrenia. His fists tightened.

This wasn't fair for Kida. He was just a kid, dammit. Now he had to deal with a disorder this isolating and misunderstood. People were going to call him a "freak" or "insane" or "psycho," and worse. He might get beaten up, hurt. What happened if Kida's "alter" took over and made him hurt someone?

Kida was still Kida, disorder or not. He was just saddened that the boy was diagnosed with something like this.

Past lives were garbage. He refused to believe that, it must be something having to do with this alter of his.

"Won't you leave Masaomi-kun alone?" He asked the alter, who tilted his head.

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

"Why not? You're hurting Masaomi-kun very much and bothering him."

"I can't, I'm part of him now." He shrugged.

"I don't like how you break him down. Stop it."

The alter rolled his eyes. "Like I'm saying, I can't leave him. I'm part of him, like I said. If you would just listen to what I'm trying to say. I don't want to hurt him, I'm just here. Deal with it."

"He is a dear person to me, please leave him alone."

"What if I say no?" The alter said, grinning.

Then the alter disappeared.

"Izaya, what happened?" Kida asked, looking confused, "D-Did it show up again?"

"Yes. They refuse to leave you."

"Am I..am I insane? I have memories of things that aren't mine, of stuff that isn't me. It's terrifying."

The boy shook, holding his hands against his body.

"Masaomi-kun, you fit the diagnosis of DID perfectly. It's an identity disorder."

"Izaya, you can't be serious, I can't have something like this." He said, laughing.

"It's all right," Izaya said, hugging Masaomi. "There's nothing wrong with being mentally ill. You are who you are, and this alter will just have to learn to treat you nicely."

"Thank you, Izaya," Kida sobbed. "I can't let Mikado know."

Now that the kid was on medication, the alter came around less often. In fact, now that that Ryuugamine kid was around, he hadn't heard anything from the mysterious alter.

He wondered if the alter had a name idly, before dismissing it.

Izaya sighed. Should he tell Saki about it?

He put the phone down.

It was Kida's decision to tell Saki.

He wasn't going to interfere.

To think he'd wanted to manipulate the kid, and now he'd started to care about him.

Fate was a lying son of a bitch, that's for sure.

Masaomi's POV

It feels like there are two parts of me now. There's me, Marisa. I've already accepted being Masaomi Kida, I can allow myself to believe that I've always been him. But the other half of me, the original Kida, is too scared to accept the truth.

Izaya thinks I'm mentally ill.

But the truth is, I'm starting to lose track of my old memories. I'm just only remembering Kida's.

"Hey," I said, going toward my other self, but he pushed me away.

"Go away! This is my body, not yours!"

"I was thrown here when I died. I can't help it." I explained, "And I didn't mean to scare you."

"Go away." He sniffed, looking defiant.

"I don't want to hurt you. The one who was being sadistic to you was someone else." I said, glaring at empty air.

Darned witch.

I put my arms around him and he just remained silent.

"Look, I didn't wanna be here, but I'm here now. We're one and the same and I'm gonna help you." I said.

"Whatever," He grumbled, but there was a small smile on his face.

Now how could I go about telling Mikado and Saki?