Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh GX
Title: Visit in the Night
Characters: Shou & Ryou
Word Count: 500||Status: One-shot
Genre: Family||Rated: G
Challenge: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, section A, #71, write a scene that does not occur in canon; Written for One Sibling Boot Camp, #11, zonked
Summary: Shou's still out of it after his duel against Ryou. Ryou thinks that's the best time to pay him a little visit.
The infirmary remained silent and empty. Ryou hadn't visited there often, save for the year before, when Fubuki slept there more often than he didn't. Tonight he had another person to visit.
Silent and empty, save for the quiet sounds of breathing and for the presence of one person in a cot, sheet pulled up to his shoulders. Ryou, known far and wide now as the Hell Kaiser, stood in the doorway of the small room and looked at his sleeping little brother.
Why, Shou? He had accepted his brother's challenge, as he would accept any challenge from anyone who seemed strong enough to give him at least a passable duel. But why had Shou done it at all? Why had he tried to bring Ryou out of his own personal hell?
It wasn't as if Ryou disliked being the way he was now. He genuinely didn't. For the first time in his entire life, there was risk when he dueled: the risk that he might lose. He wasn't perfect anymore, and while he'd once never imagined he'd want not to be, now he could not imagine himself any other way.
Still Shou wanted to change his mind, to convince him that 'respect' meant something worth fighting for. Ryou could not, did not, understand why he'd bothered to try. Shou was still a student. He had much to learn for himself.
For all of that, Ryou knew that he hadn't finished his own learning. Shou had shown him that, whether he'd known it or not.
He didn't do it. He didn't do what I did. That amazed Ryou, though one wouldn't have known it to look at him. He'd been convinced that everything Samejima had taught him about respect was nothing more than the mouthy preaching of an old man who knew nothing about how the world worked anymore. That when pressed to the edge, Shou would do as he did, and choose victory no matter what.
Yet he hadn't. Pressed to the edge, in agony of the heart and of the body, Shou did absolutely nothing that wasn't fair and honorable, that didn't show the respect of one duelist to another.
Ryou still hadn't made his mind up on if he hated him or not for that. How could Shou of all people do something that he couldn't? He'd known his brother had gotten stronger as a duelist but this still defied understanding.
A small smile touched his lips. Perhaps he's been hanging out with Juudai a little too much.
He'd heard Juudai's pained scream that Shou was the true Kaiser. The title wasn't Juudai's to give, but Ryou agreed anyway. If being Kaiser meant showing genuine respect no matter the cost, then Shou displayed that far more than he did.
And now Shou slept, still recovering from that duel, with no awareness that his brother stood and watched him.
Sleep well, Shou, Ryou thought, and turned away. He still had duels to fight.
In his sleep, Shou smiled.
The End