Parabola

Genres: Angst/Spiritual

Summary: Making the most of borrowed time should be easy for someone who works in a morgue. Atemu doesn't know what to do with his second chance, but all Mahaado wants is to see his field of reeds once more. / AU, Sealshipping, Atemu x Mahaado.

A/N: Written for the YGO Fanfiction Contest Season 8, Round Four. The pairing this time is Sealshipping (Atemu x Mahaado). Italics represent flashback scenes. This story is very clearly a modernized AU, with a darker, grittier version of Domino and Egypt, where Atemu is a diener (the person, in the morgue, responsible for handling, moving, and cleaning the corpse, and sometimes performing the entire dissection at autopsy—definition à la Wikipedia). As for the rest…well, you'll just have to read on.

Enjoy!

Parabola

The smell of death was impossible to eradicate. It lingered around everything it came in contact with, from Atemu's clothes to the tools of his trade to his skin. Even in death, it seemed, people tried their hardest to hang on to the tiniest shred of immortality they could conceive of—the brain even continued to operate for ten minutes following death. Atemu liked to hypothesize that one's entire life could be those ten, oxygen-starved minutes, and one wouldn't even know it.

Working with the dead gave him the tendency to be overly morbid; it was an occupational hazard Atemu hadn't quite ever been able to get rid of.

A buzzer sounded at the door. Someone at the DPD had phoned him a half-hour prior, alerting him to the arrival of a new body—it seemed it had arrived. Atemu unlocked the door and welcomed the officer—Kogoro, by the nametag on his uniform.

"I've got a new one for you."

"Right this way, please."

Atemu lead the officer down a floor of scrubbed linoleum, the wheels of the stretcher squeaking as it turned a corner. Beyond them stretched an innumerable amount of stainless steel doors, some empty, others not. The visible walls and the dome of the ceiling were an immaculate white that seemed to soar like a canopy. The building used to be a church, before it and its property were converted into medical and legal offices, including the city morgue, and the slope of the visible walls not covered by steel cabinetry was the only remainder from its original form. Either way, even temporarily the building still housed the soul. It was Atemu's responsibility to take care of the body.

He stopped before a drawer at chest-level and pulled it out. The body was placed on top of it, and Atemu unzipped the plastic covering the face to get a better look. She died in pain, and she died in shock.

"Listen, I can't stay for too long, there's a backlog of requests I've got to fill and one of our interns called in sick," Kogoro said. "The girl's family wished to see her again as soon as possible, but forensics wanted to make sure that the body wasn't tampered with other than the stab wounds, and…I didn't think it best they see her like this. Work your magic."

"I'll do my best." Atemu glanced at the toe tag before following Kogoro to the door, already making a list in his mind of the equipment and chemicals he'd need, the exact time it would take, and the peaceful look the girl would wear when he was done.

"That's why you're the king of the dead." The officer's smile was beginning to falter; Atemu suspected it was due to the harsh chemical scent from a project he'd completed just that morning. It took a long time to get used to, and no one besides Atemu spent such close proximity to the dead and their trappings.

"The conductor at the last stop on the bus route of life," he continued. "The tour guide to Domino's necropolis. The—"

Atemu interrupted him with a wave of his hand. "Stop it—I've heard them all before."

"Of course you have. At least the degeneration of the city doesn't follow you in here," Kogoro replied. "You just clean up the mess."

"I hope I never have to see that day," he said. "You just catch whoever did this."

"We've got some of our best men on it," Kogoro responded. "It's an interesting case, to be sure. Well, I better be getting back to the station."

Atemu nodded. "Good luck on that case. I'll see you around."

"To be honest, professionally," the officer said, "I hope I don't. But we both know it doesn't quite work that way."

As a child he had always been fascinated by the dead, studying the old books and scrolls, and learning the ancient Egyptian embalming and mummification processes. Even then, Cairo was no place for a child to grow up, but Atemu and his friends didn't know any better, and they turned the junkyards into their playgrounds and the desert became their sandbox. It pained him to see his friends sent away to boarding schools abroad, and one day his father came to him with a wizened, solemn smile, telling Atemu that they had saved enough money to send him far away, to a place called Domino, where he could learn and grow and remove himself entirely from Egypt. He had no future here, but they could give him a future somewhere else. It was his responsibility to follow the wishes of his parents, so he left without a complaint.

He watched the televised news and read newspapers from his homeland, determined to find a way to protect them, too, the way that they had saved him. He got no news of their death, but one day he read about a series of inexorable fires in the lower-class areas of the city, and soon after their letters stopped coming.

Sometimes he wondered if he was the one drawn to the dead or if it was the dead calling out to him.

Atemu often worked late or unusual hours—he worked the hours of the city, and Domino's hours were usually set by its criminals and degenerates—and he'd had an influx of new arrivals in the past week. He glanced up at the rows of unoccupied drawers, and wondered why the original designers had made the city morgue so large. Maybe they knew something he didn't; maybe they could see the future.

Another buzzer. Atemu looked up from his filing cabinet—he had been searching for the paperwork to release two of his finished commissions—only to see Kogoro standing on the other side of the thick glass doors. Atemu left his work station to let him in—another stretcher with a white body bag followed.

"Officer Kogoro," Atemu greeted him. "I haven't seen you in a while."

"Well, you can't work with a concussion," he said, rubbing the back of his neck in emphasis. "I'm just lucky to be alive."

Again they traversed the familiar path down the familiar hallway. Kogoro shivered.

"Cold?" Atemu asked politely.

"It's a freezer in here, of course I'm cold. I don't know how you can stand it."

"I've had enough of the heat—the cold is welcome to me." Atemu stopped to unlock a drawer. "Tell me about this one."

"He's one of our own, killed in action. He brought down a whole smuggling ring. He is—was—a Captain, and a good one, too. He'll be missed around here, that's for sure."

Atemu reached for the zipper and pulled it back. Staring back at him was a face he hadn't seen in over a decade, but he knew him instantly. He'd never forgotten his face. He'd never forgotten him.

Mahaado?

"A field of reeds," Mahaado said. "I think I'd like it there."

Mana elbowed him sharply in the stomach, her limbs thin and bony from youth and malnourishment. "It's only the Nile Delta, not—not—don't joke about stuff like that!"

"I'd still like to see it, and it's not far," Mahaado continued. "I'd like to see everything. All of the world, and I want to start with all of Egypt. And then I'll move East, and see all that I can see."

"Atemu, you're awfully quiet." Mana glanced up at him. "What do you think of Mahaado's plan?"

"Well, I don't ever want to leave Egypt," he insisted proudly. "I like it here—there isn't anything else worth leaving for."

"That's dumb," Mana declared. "Wouldn't you rather live somewhere cooler? I'd live in Antarctica if it meant a nice house and nice food and all the television I could watch. And polar bears."

"No. And polar bears don't live in Antarctica. That's dumb."

The set of Mahaado's jaw was straight and solemn. "I won't go anywhere if you don't, Atemu. I'm supposed to look after you, and nothing will keep me from that."

"Nothing?" Atemu looked dubious. "You can't promise that."

"Yes, I can," Mahaado said. "I promise that not even death will keep me from protecting you, and anyone else who needs it. To protect people—that's what I was born to do, I can tell."

"I wish I knew what I was born to do," Mana said sullenly.

"Well, that's easy." Atemu grinned. "Annoy us, of course. You're doing a great job."

Mana's elbow tried to find its way to Atemu's stomach, but he ducked behind Mahaado to avoid it. "Protect me from Mana! Come on, you promised!"

"That doesn't count!" Mana shouted, resting her hands on her hips. "Aw, you're no fun!"

"I did promise, Mana," Mahaado said seriously, "and I never go back on my promises."

Atemu stuck out his tongue. "You're just jealous because he likes me more than you!"

"Atemu, you're pushing your luck," Mahaado cautioned. "What about when I'm in school—you won't see me all day, then. Mana will have you all to herself!"

"I hope I never have to see that day," Atemu said. "Mana would probably tickle me to death, or put honey in my hair, or send her army of Antarctic polar bears to attack me, or—"

"He's lying, I wouldn't!" Mana's face was the picture of innocence. "Not all at once, anyway."

Mahaado laughed. "Sure, I believe you."

"Hey!" Atemu called. "You can't side with both of us at the same time!"

"Of course I can," Mahaado said. "I can do anything. And so can you."

Atemu sat at his desk, moodily twirling a ballpoint pen over a blank piece of printer paper. He'd cleaned the windows, sterilized and prepared his equipment, even organized the books on the one dilapidated bookshelf near his desk—anything to postpone thinking about his old friend or thinking about having to work on him.

Mahaado. Atemu hadn't been in contact with anyone from his youth, and as he sat there he wasn't sure he would have done so even if he'd had the opportunity. He'd severed all ties with Egypt and started fresh, and it had been the most difficult thing he'd ever done, up to now. Atemu swallowed thickly. The odds of the two of them ending up in the same place, after all that time…he didn't want to think about what could have happened if he would have known sooner, the time they could have spent together, but now—now Mahaado was out of time.

It was late enough that the sky was growing dark and Atemu shouldn't even have been in the building, but he often worked late nights, and as the only person in charge it didn't really matter what hours he kept, as long as he did his job. He'd transferred Mahaado to a large table in the back corner of the room, behind sheets of thick plastic, but he didn't want to progress any further.

Atemu had already started the paperwork. He knew that Mahaado, like himself, had no family to speak of. He was a career man to the end, so driven on his responsibilities as a police officer that he left no room for anything else.

He yawned, and as he drew one hand up to cover his mouth—virtually unnecessary, as he was the only one around—he knocked over a cup of pens and they fell to the floor in front of his desk, clattering loudly on the linoleum. Atemu sighed, moving sluggishly to pick them up off the floor.

"Hello? Who's there?"

Atemu dropped a handful of pens at the sound, backing up against the desk as he tried to convince himself he wasn't hearing a voice—the voice he thought he did. The only entrance to the morgue was the door right in front of him, and he was so tired he was hearing things, that was the only explanation—

"Hello?"

Atemu wouldn't have called what he was doing hyperventilation, but he began to feel dizzy at the thought that he was hearing his dead friend's voice, and as he peered his head around the corner of the desk he could have sworn he saw an upright shape beyond the translucent plastic draped around the table.

This was completely irrational—he was going to put this right and prove to himself that just because his mind was convinced that he was hearing and seeing strange things didn't mean that everything still wasn't perfectly normal. He'd just stop working late and drink more coffee in the future and everything would be fine.

Atemu stood up, leaving the pens on the floor, and walked swiftly down the hallway of drawers until he reached his work station. He peeled apart the curtains, fully prepared to see everything as he'd left it, and came face to face with Mahaado's brown eyes, wide and unblinking, focused squarely on his own.

Atemu yelped, throwing himself backwards as he stared in shock at the body he knew to be dead, sitting up and staring at him as though he'd seen a ghost—when really, it should have been the other way around.

"Mahaado." It was far more difficult for Atemu to say his name than he thought it would be. "Are you…alive?"

"I don't know," he answered. "You tell me, doc."

"I'm not a doctor," Atemu replied quickly. "You're in a morgue, Mahaado."

"Oh." Mahaado looked around. "So this is the morgue." He looked down at his chest, at the white bag zipped up to his waist, and the dark stain on the stiff jacket Atemu couldn't bring himself to remove earlier. "Why am I in the city morgue, on a table? I thought only…dead…people went to the morgue?"

"They do," Atemu said. "Besides the person who works here—that would be me." He still couldn't believe this was real, and he was actually witnessing the apparent reanimation of his old friend. "Pinch me."

Obediently, Mahaado reached out an arm, but Atemu drew back. "It's just—I meant it as an expression," he said. Quickly, he pinched his left arm, wincing at the definite sensation of pain.

"Could I…feel your pulse?" he asked. "Or test your heartbeat, but I doubt I'd find a stethoscope in here."

Mahaado gave him an inquisitive look, and Atemu took a step closer. "I should probably explain—you were brought in here dead, Mahaado." Speaking his name became easier with each time that he said it. "The Medical Examiner pronounced you dead. You've been lying on that table for hours. I thought you were dead—we all thought you were dead."

Mahaado glanced at his arms and turned his head to one side. "Check my wrists or my neck, whichever you prefer."

Atemu nodded, trying to instill a sense of normalcy in the process. He was checking for a pulse, for signs of life—there were far too many zombie movies in theatres right now, and his paranoia was assumedly well-founded. He took another step closer and pressed two fingers to the side of Mahaado's neck.

He drew back again, staring at his hand and Mahaado alternatively in shock. "Your skin is freezing."

He tried to reason. "You've been in a refrigerated box." That did nothing to help his logic. "Let me try again."

He knew dead skin when he felt it and this was no exception. He instructed Mahaado to breathe deeply, but he still couldn't sense a hint of a pulse. He tried Mahaado's wrists to the same result. Nothing.

"You could try yourself," he said. "I don't know what to tell you, but…you're dead. You're still dead."

Mahaado kept one hand pressed against his neck, unable to meet Atemu's eyes again. "Your hands felt like fire," he admitted. "How is this possible?"

"What is the last thing you remember?" Atemu asked.

"I led the group to arrest the leader of a smuggling ring. I was the first one through the door, and…then it becomes hazy. I know we got them, and I was in an ambulance, and then…nothing. I don't know."

"Well," Atemu said, "it's good to see you. I wish it were under better circumstances."

"Better late than never, right?" Mahaado agreed. "I'm sorry—this must be as surreal for you as it is for me. I'm still...not sure what to do. I don't feel the same—I don't quite feel alive again, but I don't know if I feel dead either. I suppose you're the expert on the dead, here."

Mahaado unzipped the rest of the bag and swung his legs over the side of the table, wincing at the effort.

"Let me help you," Atemu offered instantly, moving closer to Mahaado's side and offering him an arm.

"I'm fine," he insisted. His feet dangled barely two feet off of the ground, but as Mahaado slipped off the table, his legs buckled beneath him, and his hands clamped down on the sides of the table and Atemu grabbed one of his arms for support.

"I feel…so weak," Mahaado said. "I want to walk, but my body is not obeying me."

"Get back on the table," Atemu said, looping Mahaado's arm over his neck and pulling him to stand upright before helping him to sit back on the table. "You're not well. You're not recovered. We need to figure out what's happening to you."

"I enjoyed it, at first." Mahaado's voice was thin and weak. "Death, I think—it was dark, but I felt warm. I was comfortable and I felt safe—that I'd helped keep others safe with my life, so it was okay. And then I thought of home—of Egypt. Do you still think of Egypt as your home?"

"…No," Atemu admitted. "Domino is my home. Home is where I work and live."

"My heart never left Egypt when I did," he continued. "I wanted to go back. I thought my family, and…you, and Mana, and the others were still there. I always keep my promises. Do you remember that?"

"Mahaado, you were barely ten," Atemu said bluntly. "A promise you made when you were ten isn't worth…well, it's not the same."

"It is to me," he answered. "I never learned what happened to you. I never got the chance to see my promise through. Do you think that's why I've returned?"

"You haven't returned, Mahaado. You're on borrowed time—there's a difference between resuscitation and reanimation." Suddenly, an idea came to him. "Let me see your arm again. The left one."

Mahaado held out his arm, and Atemu grasped it, muttering an apology as they both winced from the unfamiliar sensation. He tightened his hand above Mahaado's elbow, watching for the blood vessels. "They're faint," he concluded. "I bet your blood pressure is dropping like a stone. Your skin feels colder, too." He glanced towards the giant set of refrigerators against the back wall. "Let me get you a transfusion. It'll be difficult." He paused. "If I don't, you'll probably die again."

"I don't…" he shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Didn't you hear what I said? I welcomed my death—I was ready for it. What do you expect me to do—constantly bring foreign blood into my veins to sustain my life? You saw how much my strength has left me. What's your estimation, doc?"

"I'm not a doctor," Atemu repeated. "And I'd give you a day—two at most." He combed his bangs behind one ear with a slightly shaking hand. "I'm supposed to have your body prepared for your funeral in two days. With no bequests, you have so much money set aside for it—enough for a plot and a large gravestone, marble if you want it—or even a small mausoleum."

"Bring flowers to my grave," Mahaado said, the corners of his mouth lifting in the barest of smiles. "Nice ones. I want to have the nicest grave around. I want all the other mourners to wonder who this person is, and how important they must be to have such a nice succession to the afterlife."

Atemu shook his head, his friend's humor lightening his own mood. "You haven't changed a bit, have you?"

"I would hope I've become better looking since then. I was a stick at that age." He grinned. "It's nice to see that you haven't changed much, either."

Atemu stopped, the prepared words frozen on the tip of his tongue after Mahaado's response. Atemu could think of nothing but how much he'd changed—he did not want to be associated with the small boy who didn't belong to the life he led now. He'd always tried to run from it.

"…Do you really think so?" he asked.

"Of course. I would not lie to you," Mahaado said. "I do not know what time it is—do you need to be working? Or do you need to take a meal?"

"It's"—Atemu glanced at his watch—"ten after seven. I probably shouldn't stay here overnight, but with all this work, you know, I simply lost track of time, right?" He shrugged his shoulders in emphasis.

"Grab a chair, then," Mahaado said. "We have much to catch up on."

It was like watching a dream that he never could wake up from, and he didn't even mind. Mahaado's existence kept him spellbound, and he told Atemu stories about prior cases he'd worked on, and the Egyptian dishes he'd learned how to cook, and the one time he'd accrued enough vacation days to leave the country and return to Egypt for a couple weeks, and he saw as much of the country as he could. All of the monuments, all of the culture, all of the people—it was like coming home.

A buzzer sounded far off in the distance, and Atemu's eyes snapped open. "What?"

He was met by Mahaado's solemn face. "You closed your eyes in the middle of my retelling of this case of a museum theft," he said. "That was likely a few hours ago, and I thought it best to let you sleep—the buzzer at the door has just rung. I do not know who it is."

Panic began to rise inside Atemu's chest. He glanced down; maybe no one would notice that he was wearing the same clothes that he wore yesterday?

"Just lie there, and pretend to be dead," he told Mahaado.

"If you insist," he replied wryly.

Stainless steel was reflective enough that Atemu could check his reflection on the drawers as he passed them. His hair looked like a mess, and his clothes were wrinkled, but he'd likely only get a slight reprimand for falling asleep at the office. He stifled a yawn—he needed coffee like a fish needed water.

He let in the visitor, there to claim one of the bodies he'd received two days before. Once they finished all of the paperwork and left, he did his best to organize his desk, checked his phone messages, and returned to Mahaado. He pulled back the plastic curtain to find that his friend had unbuttoned his jacket and shirt, and was pulling his arms out of the sleeves, all attention directed to the bandaged wound on his stomach. He poked the spot with one finger.

"Did you…?"

"No," Atemu answered. "The medics treated your wound while you were still alive. You went into shock, and they couldn't bring you back."

"But you could," Mahaado mentioned casually, smoothing his fingers over the square bandage.

"…Yes, I suppose." He tried to look anywhere but at Mahaado's arms or chest, the tanned skin so like his own and so different from the rest of the city.

"Would you like to help pick out your own casket?" Atemu asked, softly. A funeral director had called him about making the necessary arrangements while he was asleep. Mahaado leaned back in thought.

"I don't need anything particularly nice. Dark wood will do," he said. "But I want it to be comfortable, and roomy." He coughed and frowned, turning it into a quiet laugh. "That sounds so strange."

"It's not strange at all." Atemu tried to reassure him. "I had your formal uniform delivered—I assume you'd like to be buried in that?"

"Of course," Mahaado agreed. "What's wrong? You look as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

"It's nothing," he replied automatically. "My problems are inconsequential, not when they're compared to…this." He gestured to the space around them, including Mahaado in his breadth.

"Tell me," Mahaado asked. "I would like to know. I want to help you. Can't you tell me?"

"All this time," Atemu said, taking a step closer. "All this time and we never knew the other was only across the same city. We could have—"

"Yes," he answered, swinging his legs over the side of the table with effort so he was facing Atemu. "But that doesn't matter, now. Atemu, look at me." He did. "Stop living in the past. You need to live your life more, laugh more. Like this." Mahaado managed a deep, clearly fake laugh, stretching his mouth into a wide grin.

"If you keep looking at me like that, your face will get stuck that way," Atemu said.

"No, it won't. Besides, you'd fix me again."

"I can't fix what was never broken." He glanced down, linking his hands behind his back so he didn't have to worry about what to do with them. Suddenly uncomfortable, he sighed. "I can't. I belong here."

Mahaado tilted his head, leaning back to rest on shaky palms propped on the steel surface of the table. "Respectfully, you can't do this for the rest of your life. Being with the dead isn't life."

"I hope I never have to see that day," Atemu muttered.

"It's already here," Mahaado said. "You need to let go—of yourself, of me, of this place. Of your past. Do you not see it?"

"I want to see it," Atemu responded.

"Convince me," Mahaado told him. "Make me believe you."

"I can't," he said. "It means too much to me—you mean too much to me."

"Then convince me of that," Mahaado began, before Atemu closed the distance between them to press his lips to Mahaado's. The contact was exhilarating, but after a moment it finally registered that Mahaado's lips were ice-cold, so cold that Atemu couldn't stand his touch a moment longer and pulled away, watching the broken look of grief pass over the other's face and knowing his own mirrored it.

Atemu's resentment was directed solely on himself—he'd been given this second chance for a reason, and he was going to take it. "I don't think I've convinced you yet."

He tilted his head up and kissed Mahaado again, ignoring the pain and transforming it into something better, determined to take what little he could out of the relationship that could have been and now never would be. Like before it became too much, and he broke the kiss, watching with concerned eyes how weak Mahaado looked in that moment. Atemu knew he could never get close to the other, not when they were like this. Nothing could ever come of it.

He didn't know what else to say. "I'm…so sorry."

"Consider me convinced," he said through the barest of smiles. "There's hope for you yet."

Mahaado's right shoulder sagged, the arm unable to support his weight falling to the table with a shaking suddenness. "Help me lie down," he gasped. Atemu moved to his side, gingerly helping him move without actually touching his skin.

"You shouldn't reach for something that is already out of your grasp." Mahaado's voice was thin, yet he spoke with strength. "I'm already gone."

"Where are you going?" he asked him.

Mahaado closed his eyes, a smile on his face. "Somewhere warm and perfect. Paradise. A field of reeds."

"Paradise," Atemu echoed. "It sounds nice."

"It is," Mahaado agreed. "You'll join me some day."

Warm—like Egypt, like home—nothing like this refrigerator. Nothing like Domino.

"Every day in paradise is warm," Mahaado said. "Your touch is like my paradise." Atemu missed Mahaado's touch already, but he knew he would never have it again. He physically ached from how strongly he missed things he'd never thought he ever would.

"Wait with me for the end." Atemu could barely hear Mahaado's voice, but he hung on to it like a lifeline. Atemu would never forget it. He would never forget him.

He had no idea how much time had passed. Atemu blinked, staring up at the harsh fluorescent lighting above them. It was almost unfair how bright it was. Atemu thought he might be caught in it.

Atemu left a giant bouquet of water lilies on Mahaado's grave, just like he asked. The very next day, he wrote an appeal to the department asking for some of his vacation time. He had enough to probably take a month or more off, but he decided to start small. Two weeks was enough time to see Egypt.

He didn't realize plane tickets were so expensive, but he had no regrets as he booked the ticket to Cairo.

"I'd like to see everything. All of the world, and I want to start with all of Egypt. And then I'll move East, and see all that I can see."

Atemu planned to start with Egypt, and see as much of it as he could. He wanted to see it—he would need to have stories of his own to share with Mahaado when they met again, after all.

Death wasn't the end. Death was simply the end of life.

The End.

Footnotes:

1) A parabola, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is a conic section, the intersection of a right circular conical surface and a plane parallel to a generating straight line of that surface. That is Wikipedia's definition, and sounds nothing to me like what a parabola actually looks like. It has kind-of the shape of the chain of a necklace.

2) This story indirectly references 11:59:59pm—the girl at the beginning of the story is the first victim from that case, and (the real) Officer Kogoro is working on it (and subsequently gets injured by Arcana—read it, it's interesting). It's largely irrelevant to this story, but I liked setting the stories in the same, gritty version of Domino.

3) A good portion of the events regarding funerary practices was fictionalized and embellished from what little I know. I realize things may be different in Japan, but I've only read about the American version of things, so please forgive me for any errors or educate me if you notice anything glaringly wrong.

4) Reviews would be much valued and appreciated, from contest participants to random readers. Thank you for reading!

~Jess