and peer into souls,
._._.
By the time Yuugi got back to the motel, it was early evening; Yuugi immediately went up to his room to pack away his meager collection of belongings. Most of Yuugi’s decks of cards had been stolen, lost, or used beyond recognition in his bouts of gambling over the past week, and with the depleted medical supplies it was very easy for him to pack away the book Just Seven, which had been previously resting on the unmade bed. The Titan – Grandmother Kameyo – could have it back, he reasoned, once they saw each other again in Domino.
He ate a final meal – an unremarkable Indian noodle dish that was both bland and flavorless due only to the lackluster skill of its preparation – and Yuugi could not help the giddy smile from constantly crossing his face. Finally, finally, he had nothing to do for hours until Kaiba’s men would arrive in the dead of night to escort him to the night train back to Domino. The matron Yamafuku, when Yuugi explained the predicament, agreed to let him merely stay on one of the lobby couches until his transportation arrived, though it had cost him his final three decks of playing cards.
The room was quiet and empty, the hearth cold and the outdoor foot traffic dying down in the mid-evening darkness. Cradling the Puzzle, Yuugi seated himself on one of the numerous brown leather armchairs, as comfortable and inviting as any bed. Yuugi closed his eyes, hopeful, fervently wishing for success, and he cupped his hands more tightly around the still frozen Pyramid.
My other self, Yuugi thought, wished, prayed, a spirit who was once Pharaoh, sealed up his name. In ignorance, our rival gave him a name against his will. Millennium Puzzle, Pyramid of God: will you destroy this name, and the ties it has wound around him?
Yuugi kept his eyes closed as silence stretched, but he dared not cease hoping and mentally pushing towards what he hoped was the artifact. The silence stretched and thinned like a taffy pull until it snapped and broke and crashed around Yuugi like so much falling, burnt and broken sugar.
He heard the rushing of wind through reeds, of birds’ wings and their fluttering within nets, of water and fire and the shifting of the ground, of the grind of stone against wood, of the pests of night and the scavengers and a hundred thousand voices all murmuring in a language that was harsh and strange and magic. He heard a million noises, and they spoke to Yuugi in pictures and scents and caresses on his mind. Like reading omens in birds or tealeaves or runes Yuugi understood the meanings without words.
This is a rough and idiomatic translation:
How can there be two of Yuugi, and one be completely different from the other? Who is Yuugi?
I am Yuugi, he replied in only words; the other is not Yuugi. He resides within the Puzzle, and sometimes lives in me – uses my body, manipulates my shadow, sees my thoughts.
A smattering of images appeared against the darkness of Yuugi’s eyelids. A parasite? Within you and us?
A friend, Yuugi replied, with whom I share myself willingly. He cares for me, protects me, he—
Is not kind, not merciful, not happy or joyous or kind, not trusting. He does not know charity. He is a predator that stalks in the night, caught in a trap; why should he be freed?
We share everything with one another, Yuugi answered, because we’re both... empty in places. I don’t know bravery, or cunning, I don’t know many things he does – and those things he lacks, I have. It’s all right that he does not know things like charity and mercy – I know them, and could teach him.
The sounds and sights were a jumble of meaning now, confusing and aimless. It took a moment for something coherent to surface.
Why should we break this thing? He deserves all the pain he receives.
That may be true, Yuugi conceded, his grip flexing on the Puzzle; he was not surrendering, but he has done good as well.
Not enough. Why should he be freed?
The feel of the thought was growing increasingly agitated, and Yuugi was beginning to fear that if he could not answer properly, that not only would the Puzzle reject his request but that it could very well retaliate for Yuugi’s failure. It controlled the Dark Games – if this were one that Yuugi lost—!
Dimly, external stimuli were making their way into Yuugi’s mind: he was moving, being carried in someone’s arms through the chill night air, someone calling that he ‘had his bag,’ but Yuugi quickly pushed these thoughts and sensations away.
Because... I am the one who solved the Millennium Puzzle, the artifact that has driven others mad. I was chosen as its owner – I was not punished for attempting to assemble it, and after eight years I was rewarded with the Pyramid of God.
Silly boy, said whatever voices that resided within the Puzzle that were not the other Yuugi, we control the Dark Games for we are a Dark Game. Even you have suffered greatly.
The sounds and sights of communication ebbed away, and Yuugi’s mind filled with images of his childhood – his beloved father’s death shortly after he received the Puzzle, the abandonment by his few friends when Yuugi tried coping with his grief with more games and strategies that his classmates couldn’t understand, the increase in the number of bullies harassing him when he wasn’t growing as fast as anyone else – how more and more his skills increased in games and nothing else, how he could always manage a victory through uncanny turnabouts, how people began to hate him for it. How, even through all his suffering, he had somehow managed to stay so aggressively passive...
Silly boy, so persistent, he should have gone mad ages and ages before. Silly boy let the Pharaoh escape his duty in his Pyramid among the living – now that a second name has rebound him within, why should we destroy that which captures the heart of penalty?
The image that came to Yuugi’s mind was not one provided by what entity it was that spoke from the Puzzle, but from his own mind, his imagination and memory. In his mind, Yuugi saw a man who looked both painfully familiar and like no man Yuugi had ever seen before. His hands, with skin as black as leather, were folded over his bare chest, above his heart. Around the man’s neck hung the Millennium Puzzle, as Yuugi had never seen, glowing as bright as a winter’s dawn. The man pulled his hands away, and each hand was covered in thick, red blood. He held something in each of his hands, but Yuugi could not tell what they were – they were so small and mutilated, something inherently not right about them – and his heart clenched in pain at the sight. Blood dripped from his hands and from the wound in his chest, and the liquid boiled and melted away when it touched the white-hot Pyramid. The memory or vision or imagining, whatever this image was, vanished as abruptly as it came.
You shall release him, answered Yuugi, because the Pyramid of God was built to house and dispense both mercy and penalty, and even though he’s done some terrible things... he’s done them justly, and enough good to earn a second chance.
Yuugi had been set down in the physical world, but the Puzzle still held his complete attention.
And who are you to demand such charity to the king?
I... am a heart of mercy, he answered softly, and if I could, I would bind myself there in his place.
There was something shaking now, but whether it was the world outside of Yuugi’s body, or the Pyramid in his hands, or some strange magic working in his mind, Yuugi couldn’t tell. Whatever entity it was that gave voice and images to communicate to Yuugi from the Puzzle gave what Yuugi could only describe as a reaction of both joy and apprehension.
Yes, it seemed to say, but there was the trail of unfinished thought and suddenly Yuugi was standing within a strange but entirely familiar bedroom – the one in which he had awoken before, during that dream he’d had only the night prior. Stepping over a myriad of toys, Yuugi went to the door leading into the black labyrinth. The door gave way without even a touch to its surface, swinging out into the darkness until it made a soft squelching thud of impact against the outer wall. Stepping out to look, Yuugi watched the door appear to slowly sink and melt into the wall, like so many lives lost in pits of tar, until eventually there was no door to be seen at all.
Light from the bedroom spilled out into the hallway this time, unlike the reversal the night before. Yuugi could still feel the weight of the Puzzle against his chest – a weight that had been conspicuously absent the last time he walked through this darkness – and for the first time in days he could feel heat radiate from it. Even through his thick clothing, it felt as though his skin was being caressed by sunlight.
Yuugi smiled, and brushed his fingers over its smooth, hard surface. “Will you help me find him?” he asked the item, “I’m afraid I’ll just get lost again.”
It was sudden, the weight that pulled Yuugi down, as though he and the harsh ground had each been covered in powerful magnets. Yuugi collapsed to his knees, his hands slamming against the rough stone floor to prevent his face from cracking open on the impact. The Pyramid too had hit the floor, but it was oddly balanced on its center diamond-bottom point, even though it should have logically toppled onto one of its sides. Yuugi tried standing, but the Puzzle would not lift from the ground, not even when he attempted to bodily move it. His fingers brushed against the Puzzle’s eye, and from it emerged a shaft of white light, like that of a lantern filled with sunbeams; all the drifting dust motes in the air twinkled like dancing stars.
Yuugi shifted forward and, though it had remained stationary when he physically touched it, the Puzzle now glided straight forward like ice on a hotplate, the shaft of light perfectly steady. He sighed quietly to himself, but crawled onward.
If he had to do this through such prostration, he would not complain, even as the stone beneath him grew colder and rougher. Every ten or so feet the Pyramid would sudden turn such that the light pointed in a new direction, and Yuugi would quickly rotate to follow suit. Even as he felt the knees of his pants rip, and what felt like broken glass bite into his hand, Yuugi only paused to align his path in the new directions the Puzzle indicated.
He dared not look away from the Puzzle for fear of missing a turn, and thus he did not see how he was crawling through otherwise apparently solid walls, or over gaping pits that should not hold him aloft; he did not see the ominous door, emblazoned with a single wrought eye that glowed at his approach, or how it swung open to his entrance.
The stone got rougher, and shortly Yuugi could hear the sounds of heavy weights crashing around him, and of sharpened metal slicing through the air – he even felt the pressure of cut wind against his neck as something swung above him – but he did not dare look.
In his youth, his parents had occasionally told him stories about the dangers of looking at things forbidden – of being turned to salt or a thousand varieties of stone. Yuugi knew now, of course, that they had just not wanted him to walk in on them having sex (and he was eternally grateful that his younger self had been under the impression that his mother was secretly a gorgon), but one of the stories came back to him now.
Yuugi was not terribly familiar with the story of Odysseus, but he did know of Orpheus, the musician who had traveled to the underworld to retrieve his lost love: how he only had to lead her from the depths of hell without looking back to make sure she followed. Of course he looked – everyone always did in such stories.
Yuugi continued crawling after the light, his hands bleeding now, his knees too, and even though he crawled up stairs and across what he hoped was glass or ice but knew to be air and water, he pressed on. He did not know how many miles he had crawled, or how many days had passed, when the light flickered gold before dying off completely. Yuugi, on his hands and knees, stayed very still, sweat rolling irritatingly down his temples and over his cheeks, but he did not brush it away. The Puzzle, which had through this entire journey remained balanced on its point, toppled.
Very slowly, Yuugi crawled back and up to sitting, the weight of the Puzzle feeling like only of a bag of wind, but still warm and metal against his chest. Eventually, Yuugi looked.
He was sitting on the cold, stone floor of a very large and dusty room. It was hard to see how large and how dusty the room could be, because Yuugi was facing a wall. When he finally made his way up to standing, he could see how large the room was because the wall, as it turned out, was a platform of some kind.
Upon the stone tablet, larger and wider than even Yuugi’s mother’s bed, lay the other Yuugi, bound in chains.
It was very, very difficult for Yuugi to refrain from scrambling onto the platform, seeing the nightmare sweat rise and build and roll from the other Yuugi’s flushed forehead. He wore the same clothes as Yuugi, but Yuugi’s were bloodied and ripped in completely different places. The other’s eyes and teeth were clenched and tight, his hands fisted. The chains that bound him were brilliant and red hot, hissing but not quite burning through the cloth and flesh. Yuugi frantically scanned the slab and the chains, searching for a lock to break before his self-control shattered, but his gaze kept flicking back up to his other’s face.
Barely visible, the other Yuugi’s lips moved, and barely audible, a gasp of pain reached out. ‘Please,’ it said without words. ‘I’m sorry,’ it said in fewer movements. It begged, it pleaded, it cried, it screamed, all in a single gasp, a single word.
“Aibou...”
Orpheus turned in the mouth of the cave; Yuugi jumped and scrambled onto the stone slab, and without thought he started yanking at the chains, climbing atop and straddling the other Yuugi without hesitation. Yuugi yanked on the chains, but they were as strong as iron and did not lift far enough to move in any way productive. Yuugi did not scream, or cry, even though the frustration of being right there and unable to do anything was clogging his throat. He shook, and shuddered, and released the warm chains, and he placed his hands on the junctures of the other Yuugi’s shoulders and neck. Yuugi leaned forward.
“Other me,” he muttered softly, “I’m here, I’m here, but I don’t know what to do.”
The other Yuugi did not respond, merely continuing to writhe in trapped agony under Yuugi. Yuugi sat back up, and with shaking hands he grabbed the swaying Puzzle.
“Please,” he asked, “help me. Help me break this, help me bring him back...”
With a growl of frustration Yuugi tore the Puzzle from around his neck and began hacking at the taut, suspended bits of chain, hearing the rattle and clash of metal against metal loudly in his ears.
“Let him go!” he shouted, not even seeing the sparks of friction fly as he tried ineffectively smashing the chain. It shook under the force, but nothing else. Yuugi did not care at this point, rage and frustration pumping through every fiber of him. “He’s not yours to chain,” several more slams of the Puzzle against the chain, the racket getting louder and the other Yuugi still churning in pain, the blood from Yuugi’s hands dripping and splattering on the Puzzle and the chain and the slab and all, “not yours to hurt, not yours, not— not—”
Yuugi’s entire body clenched; his jaw tightened, his eyes shut, his hand holding the Puzzle ached, the other hand still braced on the other’s shoulder, and he was shaking in the force of his hammering on the chain.
“He’s my other self, not Saikoro, not named, not anyone else – he’s mine!”
There was no great explosion, or light, or a feel of motion; when Yuugi shouted the words, he felt the chains beneath him, resisting him, and then he did not.
When Yuugi opened his eyes, there were no chains holding the other Yuugi, and the tightened muscles of his face and body had begun to relax. Clambering off the other Yuugi’s body, Yuugi checked for any other signs of binding before gently wiping the nightmare sweat from that flushed brow and, just as softly, gave it a small peck of a kiss.
Wary of his surroundings, and not daring to wait any longer, Yuugi carefully pulled and lifted the other Yuugi from his dormant sprawl. The Puzzle, which Yuugi had neglected to replace around his neck, sat hauntingly on the dark black slab, and Yuugi shifted the other Yuugi’s weight in order to grab the cord, not daring to let go of his other self.
As he pulled the Pyramid across the dark surface, Yuugi noticed the worrying trail of amber light left upon the stone surface, and how that light quickly branched and crossed and webbed along the stone, weaving in and out in an ornate geometric net.
Instinctively, Yuugi knew this portended Bad Things.
The voices that chorused together were both familiar to Yuugi and complete strangers, and trying to ignore them Yuugi dragged the recalcitrant Pyramid away from the nearly glowing slab, more gold now than black. The words were ones Yuugi did not recognize in his limited exposure to foreign languages: it could have been Latin, or Russian, or Arabic for all he knew, and as many times as the words repeated he could not make sense of them.
The platform was nearly all gold now, and he realized it wasn’t merely a slab of large stone or anything similar – it was a box of some kind, for he could see the gouged black seam between lid and container as contrasted to the golden light. Still struggling to both carry the dead weight of his other self (he dared not let go) and pull the Puzzle away from the thing that was looking more like an extraordinarily large casket than anything else, the chanting got louder and with a cry and a final yank the Puzzle pulled free from the casket. It swung heavily from Yuugi’s hand like a pendulum. With a bit of maneuvering Yuugi swung the Pyramid onto the chest of his other self, and he began following the trail of blood prints and the white scar the Puzzle had left on the floor.
Walking the path back out, even carrying the unconscious yet shaking body of the other Yuugi, was a much quicker journey. Yuugi, every other hour or so, would sit upon the white trail path and try to awaken the other Yuugi to limited success. The most he had gotten thus far was very thinly opened eyes and a murmured “aibou?” but the tone was calm and fatigued, and did not actively increase Yuugi’s worry.
By the time he finally crossed the doorway back into the dark hallway, Yuugi was staggering; although in this realm the other Yuugi weighed only as much as a small child, fatigue still wracked Yuugi’s arms and he only wished he could crawl into a bed and sleep for the next several thousand years. He leaned back against the closed and cold stone door, shifting the weight of the other Yuugi in his arms.
“We’re almost out now, other me; do you feel like waking up yet?”
He was merely asleep now, for the other Yuugi pressed his face harder against Yuugi’s chest, grumbling. Yuugi smiled, tightening his grip, and began following the trail once more.
It had not been something Yuugi imagined himself ever doing – carrying anyone, let alone another man, bridal style like this. He knew he was being pessimistic for once, but Yuugi had never actually imagined himself ever getting married, the one occasion where it would actually be necessary for him to do so; he short stature and constant placement in the role of ‘victim’ made rescuing others seem laughable. But here, in this place-not-place, Yuugi had been able to actually do something good, had helped someone he actually cared for, someone precious to him, and it was Yuugi who did it – not Yuugi’s family, not his friends, not some spirit of a Pharaoh who popped in to save the day when things got rough. Yuugi had been able to live without his other self for a while now, managing on his own. Sure, he thought as he walked, he had been almost crazy with fear that he wouldn't be able to protect himself, but he had managed, and probably could have continued to do so. Yuugi did not actually need the other Yuugi.
It was a jarring thought, and it made Yuugi hold the other Yuugi more fervently and walk slightly faster, as if the thought would take the other away. There! Yuugi saw the light from the open doorway of the childish bedroom, and he hastened towards it.
He might not need the other Yuugi in his head, or heart, but Yuugi certainly wanted him there. Yuugi liked having someone who would stay with him through anything, he liked having someone to confide to; hell, he even liked the feel of the other Yuugi in his arms, and liked the residual taste of the other Yuugi's sweat on his lips.
Entering the room that no longer had a door, and kicking stray toys out of the way, Yuugi gently laid the other Yuugi upon the mattress, moving the Puzzle and removing the other's shoes. Yuugi tugged free the soft blankets, and kicking off his own shoes he climbed under the covers as well. He did not need the other Yuugi, he thought fondly as he pushed himself in closer, sliding his arm across the other Yuugi's chest and hugging their two bodies tight together, laying his head on the other's shoulder. The other Yuugi was wanted, and that was enough.
He was, after all, everything Yuugi had wished for on the Puzzle.
._._.
The light that awoke Yuugi was an inconstant thing, cut every few seconds by a slash of darkness, making the early morning light much more annoying. He could feel that he was moving, the awareness of motion in a vehicle coming to his mind; he could feel the wind getting sliced into the cabin by an errant open window, at which point it would circle the area like an eddy before making its way back out again.
Even though it was not where Yuugi fell asleep, he knew he was lying in a bed on a train before he even opened his eyes. The sight of swiftly moving trees out the window above and before him did little to disprove this notion. Yuugi clenched his eyes shut, burrowing back under the covers and rolling away from the cheery solar reminder of there being a rest of the universe.
The feel of arms around him remaining stationary while he moved was not particularly interesting to his fatigued body; the chest in which he was able to hide his face was just a better blockade from the accursed morning sun, and Yuugi accepted this presence easily. It was not until the chest in front of him shook in laughter and the arms tightened around him that Yuugi bothered to acknowledge the entity with a muffled “mmph?” of inquiry.
One of the hands stole up into Yuugi’s hair and grazed his skin with blunt nails, like inefficient but wonderfully pleasant plows unable to pierce the field’s soil.
“Ready to wake up yet, aibou?” The gentle baritone was as light as the sunbeams now assailing Yuugi’s back, and he shook his head against the torso.
“Too early,” muttered Yuugi against the warmth, wrapping his arms around the other and pulling him into a tighter embrace, feeling the arms around him squeeze lightly in return. Yuugi wasn’t awake enough to even think about the sensory feedback loop, and pointedly ignored the part of his mind that wanted to analyze further. “Too tired. Hurts,” Yuugi continued, yawning. The hand made another pass through his thick, dark hair.
“Aibou,” said the other, a humor and joy in his voice that was new to Yuugi but entirely welcome after so long without even cold indifference or merciless anger, “you don’t have to hold me so tightly; I’m not going anywhere.”
In response, Yuugi’s grip merely held on tighter, and had it not been for the fact Yuugi’s nails were too short, they would have left painful crescents in the other’s back.
“Not again,” replied Yuugi, trying to force himself back to sleep before he did something ridiculous like sob, and he might have succeeded had the arms around him not suddenly pushed him out of that comforting embrace. He just wanted to sleep, but there was a hand nudging Yuugi’s chin and a pet name being called (and how had he never realized that it was a pet name all along, like darling?), and he could not ignore this. Yuugi blearily looked into the too-close worried gaze of the other Yuugi, not wanting to deal with such emotions after just waking up.
“What do you mean, ‘again’?” asked the other, perplexed. “I haven’t gone anywhere before. I’ve never left you, you know that.”
Yuugi could not help the scowl from crossing his face, both at the statement and at the further emerging of his mental facilities. When Yuugi partially raised himself, propped upon one elbow, it was not to examine the lavishly furnished KaibaCorp private train sleep car, with its merrily bolted-down furniture and lavish magnetic game tables; he did it because his reawakening logic sensors were wondering what the hell he thought he was doing, embracing the mostly invisible, partially physical manifestation of a voice living in his head. He was not quite awake enough to stage an adequate rebuttal.
“You don’t remember?”
The movement was so fast, Yuugi was hearing the squeak of the mattress springs before he realized the other Yuugi had not only pressed Yuugi back flat into the mattress, but was now propped up above him with a look of such deep and absolute terror that Yuugi flinched under that serious gaze.
“Aibou,” he said in a calm so perfectly cultured that Yuugi could feel the desperation in his core twisting at him like a corkscrew, “what, precisely, do you mean by ‘not again’ and ‘you don’t remember?’ ”
Yuugi, of course, had lost time in his memory – patches of days just gone with little reason, but after the first few he had bottled up his fear and hidden it away so as not to frighten away his friends. To Yuugi, a blank spot wasn’t too frightening a scenario – scary, but not debilitating in the way Yuugi could see his other self taking it. Of course, the other Yuugi had lost much more than a few hours in his time: he’d lost his name and very identity. After innumerable years of unceasing ignorance, every waking hour must have been so much more precious to Yuugi’s other self than they were to Yuugi alone.
Yuugi took a steadying breath, and hoped that his other self would not react too badly to the story. (Though it did put a further damper on Yuugi’s good mood: after all, where was the fun in rescuing someone if they didn’t even remember that they needed rescue to begin with, let alone you doing it?)
“Do you remember... fighting with Kaiba-kun in his office, at the Tower?”
The reaction was not one that boded well at all.
“Kaiba? Why would I have had need to fight Kaiba? I’ve played him in a Dark Game, and I assigned him a Penalty. He’s not—”
“—The same person who stole grandfather’s precious card?” Yuugi interrupted with a frown, “and no one escapes a Dark Game unscathed?”
The other Yuugi frowned as well. “Not even victors. I remember saying this, but—”
Yuugi rolled the other Yuugi to lie down upon the mattress once more, making sure not to push the other through the mattress itself; each of them were now upon their sides and facing one another.
“What do you remember about our trip to the Tower?”
The other Yuugi’s expression only turned sourer. “I remember entering, and how you convinced the Englishmen to sneak us up. I remember you beating that puzzle door—”
“That was us,” interjected Yuugi, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Briefly the other Yuugi smiled, though it was only a quirk of his lips and a softening of the muscles around his eyes. “I remember the batty old woman in the wheelchair, and that she sent us to Kaiba’s floor, and.” The other Yuugi stopped, scowling. “And Kaiba arrived, and... we must have passed out. Did he hurt you, aibou?”
Unsure how to proceed, Yuugi pursed his lips in thought and turned his gaze away; seeing that as his answer, the look of rage was instant, and the other Yuugi had risen briskly from the bed before he shouted, “if I see that bastard, I will destroy him! I will shatter his heart beyond repair and curse his family name, I’ll—”
Yuugi too left the bed, grabbing the other Yuugi from behind by wrapping an arm around the other’s stomach. “Kaiba-kun didn’t intend to hurt us!” he said with conviction, throat tight with worry as he circled around the tense-locked stiff form of his other self. “He didn’t try to kill us – he’s actually helping us get back to Domino—”
The other Yuugi’s hands desperately grabbed Yuugi’s shoulders, digging fingers into the muscle, his expression wild. “Going back to Domino? Aibou, you’ll be killed if we go back, and— what happened to our disguise?”
A shaking, nervous hand combed up into Yuugi’s dark spikes of black hair, standing tall and proud like a crown, before coming forward to touch one of Yuugi’s not-exactly-bleached-blond locks. The anger seemed to dissipate from the other’s body, and Yuugi felt the other hand on his shoulder fall slack and slide off.
“Sweet mother of – aibou... how much time have I lost?” The other Yuugi looked so worried and scared that Yuugi instantly knew the other was thinking in terms of months and seasons. Yuugi placed his hands on the other’s shoulders and gave as comforting an expression as he could.
“Not as long as you think, other me,” he said, guiding the other Yuugi back to the bed, whereupon they both sat tensely next to one another, Yuugi’s hands resting now atop the other’s, “you’ve missed... you’ve been unconscious for a about a week now. You haven’t actually lost more than half an hour of real time, and... considering the circumstances, it’s completely understandable.”
The other Yuugi sat in a deject silence as Yuugi briefly recounted the past several days – what had happened with Kaiba that first day, and how lost and scared Yuugi had felt without his other self, how he had intentionally gambled with criminals and with his own safety in an attempt to call out the other Yuugi, but instead how Yuugi had to overcome the danger himself; how he had been abducted by the Titan of the Marsh, and discovering her relation to him; Yuugi briefly skimmed over how he had gotten Kaiba to agree to get him a fair trial in Domino (sure that if the other Yuugi knew precisely what Yuugi had promised – including his own murder, and that Kaiba had accepted such an offer – Kaiba would not survive the night), and how Yuugi had himself braved the labyrinth of nowhere to rescue the other Yuugi from his imprisonment within the Puzzle.
“And then we woke up on a train. The end.”
The other Yuugi remained silent for a long time, even as Yuugi called to him and prompted him for a response. Without a word, the other Yuugi stood from the bed, his jaw clenched. Yuugi did not stand to stop the other, but quickly regretted his inaction when the other Yuugi let loose a growl and a cry of frustration and anger, sweeping his arm through the air as if to knock over some invisible foe. Had it been Yuugi in his place doing the same, the action would not have reached anything save air, but in the wake of the other Yuugi’s sweeping arm the pieces on one of the magnetic chess sets several feet away slid quickly across the chessboard, many tumbling and shattering on the train car floor. Kings and rooks and opponent’s pawns mingled together on the ground like stardust.
The other Yuugi turned, seeking something else to destroy in his impotent rage, but Yuugi was faster, having sprung to his feet, and he rushed the other Yuugi. Before the destruction could continue, Yuugi had begun to physically restrain the other. With the other Yuugi off balance from the surprise attack, Yuugi flung his other self down onto the mattress, following quickly after to both pin the other from rising up again and from sinking through the mattress. The other Yuugi tried bucking and tossing his captor in order to escape in any direction, but Yuugi’s legs were clenched too tightly, and his hands had firm grips on the other’s wrists, pinning him down too effectively. They were equally matched in physical strength, and with the advantage of leverage Yuugi had won the match.
“Other me, calm down!” Yuugi cried, plaintively staring into the eyes of his other self, they most striking physical difference between the two of him, “please! You’re not at fault, there was nothing you could have done!”
The other Yuugi nearly snarled back. “But isn’t that wonderful! Nothing I could do? You could have been killed and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything – I wouldn’t have even known!” The other Yuugi tried rolling for freedom, but Yuugi pushed him back down.
“But I didn’t need you to rescue me, I rescued myself – I rescued you! Why is this so frustrating to you?”
The other Yuugi turned his face away from Yuugi’s, but Yuugi was not pleased with this apparent surrender – it made him furious.
“Oh, so it’s a bad thing that I did something for you for once? Angry that you had to be saved by stupid, pathetic little Yuugi?”
“No,” murmured the other, but Yuugi didn’t stop.
“Oh, I see. Yuugi’s not allowed to do things for himself, Yuugi can’t fend for himself, Yuugi’s hopeless and useless without his other self—” Yuugi fought back his sorrow as his own insecurity came to light, plaguing him in the shadows of his heart since their escape from Domino, fears that Yuugi had only recently been able to conquer and prove wrong – and the other Yuugi was angered that Yuugi could fend for himself? How dare he!
“How dare you,” whispered Yuugi in a snarl, his hands trying to fist but impeded by their hold on the other Yuugi’s wrists. “I don’t need you looking down on me too. How dare you try to turn me into... into a damned girl who needs to be saved? I’m a man too, and I don’t need this shit from you. I don’t need you.”
The other Yuugi had been whispering objections, but Yuugi hadn’t heard them, but now he could see that his other self had his eyes and jaw clenched shut, as though trying to ignore Yuugi.
“Did you hear me? I don’t need you!”
At that the other Yuugi snapped his gaze to Yuugi’s, and Yuugi nearly recoiled at the utter anguish he saw there now. His eyes weren’t wet, but god he looked on the verge of crying—
“Break the Puzzle,” the other Yuugi managed to choke out, hiccuping under Yuugi’s body. “I’d rather be resealed in darkness than have you... you...”
“Have me what?” Yuugi whispered, the anger gone from his body at the sight of the other Yuugi’s complete despair. The other’s lips were actually quivering like a child’s.
“Have you hate me.”
Yuugi’s entire body slackened with the blow, but the other Yuugi made no move to escape. He merely turned his face from Yuugi’s once more, still despairing, still shaking beneath Yuugi, but Yuugi could now see the change in the way he closed off his emotions in his face. The other Yuugi was resigned. Yuugi’s body was flooded with ice, and he was sinking into despair – were these his emotions, or his other self’s? Was their anger and despair feeding into one another again, was that how the other Yuugi had come to such a ridiculous conclusion? Yuugi released the other Yuugi’s arms, and after redistributing his weight on an elbow into the mattress, he gently touched the cheek of his other self, who wasn’t really Yuugi at all; he was a spirit, a Pharaoh, but not Yuugi.
“I don’t hate you,” he said, but the other Yuugi just flinched. Yuugi forced back a scowl and smiled instead. “I don’t hate you. I never have, I never could, why—?”
“You hate me,” interrupted the other, his face still turned, eyes still closed. “You never wanted me, you don’t need me, I’ve done nothing but cause you suffering; you hate me. I’d rather—”
“No. Look at me.”
Very reluctantly the other Yuugi (not Yuugi, never Yuugi) turned, and opened his eyes. Under that stare Yuugi climbed off the other, and pulled them both up to sitting. Yuugi then spoke with calm and force, like how his father always used to when he was alive.
“I do not hate you. What I said about not wanting you was a lie. I was angry, and depressed, and I wanted to lash out. You were the only one there, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t apologize sooner.” Yuugi placed a hand atop one of the other’s hands, but he did not turn his gaze away from those shielded, stony eyes, but still so obviously filled with hurt. “About not needing you... that is true. I don’t need you. But! Me not needing you doesn’t mean I want you to leave. I like being able to depend on you. I like knowing that if things ever get too tough for me, you’ll be there – just like I want you to know I’ll be there for you.” Yuugi closed his eyes and squeezed the other Yuugi’s hands, and he gave out a breathless little laugh when he felt that hand turn under his own and squeeze back.
“This past week, while you were gone... yes, I managed. I could play games, evade danger, survive... but I was never happy. None of my victories felt like victories. Losing you... it was like losing Jounouchi-kun, or my father, all over again – but it would have been a hundred, a thousand times worse than either of those if I thought I could never get you back. Don’t ask me to kill you.”
Yuugi opened his eyes, memorizing the way the other tried so hard to keep his face stoic, the way his face looked puffy from crying even though no tears were shed.
“I’d sooner kill myself.”
The other Yuugi, semitransparent but nearly pale in turmoil, was shaking where he sat, shaking from suppressing dry sobs, and Yuugi knew because that’s what he was doing too even if Yuugi’s were wet. Whatever tension or wire it was that held them still was shaking too, but when Yuugi’s hand slid from the other’s it snapped, and they both nearly jolted into the embrace, their murmurs of ‘never go’ and ‘never leave’ were promises and threats and pleadings, and in their turmoil they merely held one another, shaking and swaying in the train’s unceasing journey.
._._.
