When the Bonds break
By Dib07
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A/N: This was supposed to be a oneshot, but as it turned out, it turned into 2 parts. This one came out a little more angsty than I intended. Then again, I think all my stories do that. If you want the last part, please give me a line. :)
Please do not persuade me to ship characters, and please tolerate any shipping of any characters.
I write the characters as I envision them. Nothing more and nothing less.
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1:
"You little punk! Get back out here so I can throw you into the river!"
Yugi was running as fast as his little legs could carry him. He didn't dare look back. More than twice he thought they had brunted abreast of him, their arms sneering out, their hands ready to snatch him up. Somehow he had managed to stay ahead of them, but not far ahead. They'd follow him wherever he'd go, and catch up with him if he dared slow down for anything, be it traffic or to greet his own front door.
Scared and panicky, all logic had retreated underground, leaving him alone with hot, simmering fear.
"We just wanna play! Come on back 'ere you little runty coward!"
He slipped down an alleyway, screamed past one lady and then a solitary man before zipping down a brick junction that was stifled with litter and broken bits of scaffolding. Still, they chased him like a couple of thick-set lions who hadn't eaten for a few weeks.
He dived down into a new mindset while his body ran and dived under steel pipes on autopilot. He didn't know he was capable of such a thing, but he had no time to admire this.
He faced Yami's door: the door that was always shut so tight that it may as well have been part of the wall.
There was no time for niceties or apologies. He whammed the door open and clattered into near-darkness that lit up around him. Even here, in the spirit realm of his puzzle, he could feel his body running out of energy. Soon those two men would be on top of him, and they'd either hurt him or kill him. He didn't want to find out. He knew that Yami wouldn't allow it. A guardian was a guardian. So why hadn't he appeared sooner?
Then it made sense as Yugi hurried deeper inside, the light affixed to his person as if he carried a glow stick. Yami was before him. He was sitting upright in a stone chair, arms folded over his chest in the middle of an empty room.
The Game King was asleep.
God damn you, Yami!
Yugi rushed over but when he got within a metre of Yami's presence, he felt a deep pang of guilt. Waking him seemed iniquitous. Immoral. The Game King slept with not a crease on his face. There was no arrogant smirk. No frown born of deliberation. And no disapproving scowls.
He looked endearingly – normal.
Yet urgency sliced through Yugi like a hammer and he was on his guardian, one hand on each of his shoulders as he shook him. "Yami! Mou hitori no boku!"
Yami twinged, grimacing as his dark dreams were harried away. His eyes slowly opened and he was modestly dismayed to see Yugi here, before him. Yugi gave him a pleading look he had only ever seen a few times since their odd relationship of protégé and guardian had begun. "Aibou?" He had to do his best to repress a yawn. "What is your purpose here?"
"We have to switch!" Yugi begged, "Now!"
Yami leaned back in his chair, his arms still folded. "Is that so? Why? Is there a duel to be won?"
"No! I'm in danger! I'm being chased!"
"By whom?"
"Yami!" Yugi cried, taking the pharaoh's hand in urgency, "You've got to stop them! Now! I think one of them has a knife!"
"Easy, Aibou. When you are here, time almost stops. Easy." His silky, rich voice reminded Yugi to breathe. "There. That wasn't so hard, was it?" He leaned forward and touched Yugi's face with one hand. "I'd never let any harm come to you. Do you honestly wish it of me to stop them?"
Yugi hesitated a tiny fraction, then nodded. "Please. I don't know what they'll do to me."
Yami eased himself to his feet.
The transition was instant. Yugi plunged back into the safety of his mind: distant, and away from harm. Yami skidded to a stop next to some bins. Beside him was a huge, looming apartment. The sky was darkening: the sunset a candid glow of tired red as it melted into the horizon. Yami wanted to watch it disappear completely but he had more pressing matters at hand.
The two men who had been pursuing Yugi came running into the clearing. Yet when they saw their prey no longer running, and looking a little different than before, they braked to a halt. But their confusion didn't last long.
"Tired of running, are ya?" Spoke the larger of the two. He had long, red hair. "Don't you worry. We'll make sure no one hears you scream."
Yami grinned assuringly as if he was representing a duel of cards. "I suggest you turn round now, and withdraw. I don't wish to harm anyone."
"Harm? You kidding me? Jesus, what have you been on?"
"Maybe the fear has blown his circuits?" Asked the tall lad's friend. "He's got nowhere left to run after all."
"Well, I want this over and done with. I hate little guys like you being so damn popular. Just because you're good at card games doesn't make you God." And the red head went to take something from the pocket of his dark raincoat. And it was no knife. He drew out an automatic gun. On the end of the shaft was a silencer. Yami's eyes widened slightly.
He aimed it squarely at the pharaoh.
"Wait just one moment." Yami declared softly. "You can pull that trigger, but first let's play a game. It'll make things a little more... entertaining for the both of us."
The red head laughed, but the gun's aim didn't waver. "A game? You really have lost it, haven't ya? Now stop being dumb! I have the gun!"
Yami laughed back. His chortles made the two men look at each other. Their grins were wiped clean from their faces.
After Yami was done, he smiled savagely. "Here's how we play. We each ask a question. If we know the answer, we win the round. If however one of us can't think of the answer, then the other person wins."
The red head narrowed his steel eyes. "Hey man, fuck you! I don't have to listen to your stupid charades! What are you, twelve?"
"Then I'll start." Yami said with a smirk. "What has many entrances but only one exit?"
"Go to hell!" The red head shouted, and hit the trigger.
"I've already been there." Yami replied with a gleam in his eyes.
The red head looked at his friend. He hit the trigger again.
Yami opened up his hand. What lay in his palm were six unfired bullets.
The red head stepped back. "H-How in the name of...?"
"The answer was, a maze." Yami clicked his fingers.
There was no silencer to dim the violence. The two men went down BANG after BANG. On the sixth retort, it all went quiet as the two men lay in a growing pool of glistening red. Yami surveyed them for a moment, his hands wedged in his pockets. Then he spun round, the tails of his cobalt coat sailing in the night wind, and he stalked off.
xxx
"How... how could you?"
The room was filled with the sound of tears.
The dark crevices of the room seemed to bleed desolation. Even the weather outside had seemed to clench with ruin so much so that it began to release the pressure as solemn, cold rain. It splattered gently against the windowpane in slow cadence.
"How could you... mou hitori no boku?"
"He had a gun, young one. I had to punish him and his cohort. He would have killed you!"
Yugi sat with his arms wrapped around his knees. Only one lamplight highlighted his deep, flat shadow as it ran across the room. Yami had no shadow. He sat, as light as a feather on Yugi's bed. Yugi wished he would cry. At least then he would know that his spirit couldn't be all bad. But not a single tear warmed Yami's eyes. And not a scrap of sorrow was given about the two men he had so assertively killed.
Yugi raised his head long enough to look Yami in the eye. "You're a monster!"
"Aibou... no!"
"I asked you to stop them! Now they're dead! Don't you care! Don't you have any conscience?"
"Look, I was trying..."
"I don't care for it! You've done a bad thing! Two men are dead, Yami! And it's all my fault!" He slipped the rope from his neck and held the puzzle in his hands. Yami had risen from the bed, and was looking at him in great concern.
"Aibou, if I could take it back, I would! Please! We can work this out together!"
"No. I'm done!" He approached his clothes closest and opened the door. Inside were hangers, old summer clothing, a spare school uniform and shoes covered in mothballs tucked right at the back. "If I hadn't have met you, then those two people would be alive right now! I didn't think I could hate anything in this world, Yami. But you've proven me wrong."
Yami opened his mouth, about to utter a reprisal or an apology; Yugi didn't hang around to see which. He pulled out a piece of the puzzle and the spirit was vaporized, his image gone in the blink of an eye. Trying to stifle back tears of anger, sadness and dismay, Yugi placed the incomplete puzzle on a shelf. Then he banged the closest doors shut as if the thin sheets of wood were iron bars to shun out his partner.
The little golden piece he had removed was still clutched tightly in his right fist. He threw it ungracefully into his middle desk drawer, where it could mingle with other exiled items such as misplaced erasers, broken pencils, blunt sharpeners and crumpled notepads.
His connection with Yami had been severed. No longer did he feel tied to Yami's thoughts or emotions. Instead there was an emptiness that every other person felt.
Yugi left his room, slamming the door shut behind him.
xxx
Yugi strained for the news for the next few days, expecting a police report or an investigation over the two deaths of Roger and Evais. They'd be hunting for the murderer: a murderer who had managed to slay both young men with bullets. But he heard nothing.
Still, his dread and anxiety remained, and as there was no spirit to absorb some of the worry, Yugi was left alone to deal with it.
Joey and his other friends noticed his quiet behaviour, but even more so they noticed the absence of the puzzle around his neck. Yugi never went anywhere without his puzzle. He even took it with him to the bathroom; and lay down next to it in bed like it was some kind of plush toy. When Joey chivvied him for information at dinner time when they were in the school hall eating at their tables, Yugi refused to talk about it, and when Joey didn't let up, he took his plate and walked off to eat somewhere else.
So Joey gave Yugi space.
"I think the two of them had a falling out." Anzu said. It was still lunch time. Joey and the others had eaten and the bell had yet to ring to signal the start of a new lesson. Joey had sat down with Honda and Anzu in the library where it was mostly quiet. Yugi was nowhere to be found. They had all looked exhaustively for him.
"Falling out?" Joey looked incredulous. "How da heck do you fall out with a spirit? Besides, those two are tight, man! I mean tight!"
"Yeah, I know. But even the bestest of best of friends fall out." Anzu rested her chin on her hand with her elbow on the table.
Joey didn't seem too worried. "Maybe he left the puzzle at home cuz he's in the middle of cleaning it?"
"Since when has he let a speck of dust fall on that thing?"
Joey could only shrug. "If I was a keeper of a puzzle, maybe I'd know!"
"Maybe we should just ask the little guy?" Honda bodged in.
"Go fuck yourself, Honda. He'll come around. He always does."
xxx
On the fourth day, Yugi was beginning to lose his quietly built resolve. The foundations of his grief were loosening, as was his deep worry. No one had come forward about the two murders. Yet even so, a murder was a murder. Living with their deaths on his head was a damning thing. Yugi no longer tasted the food he ate, or felt the brush as he cleaned his teeth with it. Even his lessons in class went over his head. He couldn't grasp anything. It was as if he was sleepwalking through life.
But as the days rolled by, the awful blow he had suffered began to lessen. He still woke up most nights in a sweat after envisioning their brutal deaths, but when he cried out for Yami he realized that the puzzle was still incomplete, and so Yami could not answer him or comfort him.
And so Yugi would cry himself back to sleep, stuck between corridors of indecision.
On the sixth day, Yugi stood by the closest, staring at the wooden doorknobs that would grant him access to the golden pyramid. His anger returned, almost as raw as the night when Yami had cut those two men down. But he could not stay mad at him forever. This kind of existence was not good for either of them.
However, the old cut of betrayal had barely healed.
He opened the closest doors. His stomach fell into icy knots when he laid eyes on the pyramid. Its left side glowed with glaring sunlight from the window. Its missing piece looked like a black tunnel that had drilled into the puzzle's heart.
Yugi reached in slowly, his fingers shaking.
Yami was only protecting me, I understand that. And they had a gun. But he killed them! He didn't give them a chance!
Cradling the puzzle in one hand, he closed the closest doors and walked over to the desk. He bent down and opened the middle door to scrounge around for the missing piece. His fingers explored a den full of bits and bobs along with loose items that would otherwise have been thrown away. Panic closed over his heart when no golden shape came to the surface of his hunt. That was when he realized how much he still loved his spirit, despite what he had committed.
Maybe it was foolish love.
Doomed love.
But love it still was.
The golden piece had fallen down behind a set of notepads. Yugi scrounged desperately for it after seeing its familiar golden glint, and brought it into his hand.
How easy it was, to remove a piece and then lose it.
Yugi began to fiddle to get the puzzle and the bar of gold to fit. His fervour to see Yami again only intensified.
The golden piece slipped in smoothly, and the puzzle was complete.
Yugi expected to feel Yami right away, and to see his comely figure materialize.
But Yugi continued to feel that strange, empty feeling. And no figure emerged.
Hastily, Yugi put the rope around his neck and turned the puzzle up so that he was looking at the big, all-seeing eye. "I'm sorry I shunned you, but I needed time alone. Time to think things through."
Nothing happened.
It was like he was talking to a piece of gold.
"Yami!" He entreated more persistently. "I'm sorry, do you hear! But you shouldn't have done what you did! Now say something! Anything! Get angry! Get upset with me!"
There had never been a time when Yami hadn't replied, though sometimes he did sleep deeply, and more than once Yugi had to 'shake' him awake like he had done before the goons had showed up to cause all this tension.
Yugi, flaming with determination, awoke in his spirit room. Then he marched over the threshold of his door and into the cold, quiet corridor between their rooms. Yami's door was shut – as always.
Yugi walked up to it and placed one hand on the iron handle with every intention of levering it down to open its secret depths. Only this time when he pressed on the handle, the door simply didn't open.
This shook Yugi right up. Yami had never, ever locked the door on him.
Yugi's anger and distress returned full-throttle. "Yami! Yami open the door! Please! Let's talk!" He knocked on the cold entrance and stepped back, taking a moment to harness his heartache. Yami had probably been stirred from a deep sleep and was still making his way to the door. Or perhaps he was sulking a little himself, and was waiting to surprise him?
But there was no echo of emotion from Yugi's doppelganger, and no noise. Yugi may well have been knocking on the entryway to a mausoleum.
"Yami!" Yugi started to shout. "Answer me! Please don't do this! I'm sorry, dammit!" He tried pulling on the handle, kicking at the door or bashing it with his fists. "Why won't you answer?"
He thought that Yami was perhaps playing a trick on him.
A mean trick.
So where was the magician to fess up to his prank?
Yugi's determination was reduced to ashes as he succumbed to the ground, his back pressed against the door.
xxx
Night came and went. Morning found Yugi on his way to school, still talking to his puzzle. First he was begging, pleading. Then he ranted at it, demanding a response. Those demands turned into tears.
Joey found him crying in the locker room.
"Hey, pal. What happened? Did someone beat you up? I'll kill 'em! Just point me in the right direction and they're as good as dead!" He wrapped an arm around his little duelling partner as Yugi sobbed.
When he was able to get enough breath in, he choked after a few false starts: "Yami's not r-r-replying to me!"
"Not replying to ya? How long's this being going on for? An hour? Possibly two?"
"Since y-yesterday!"
Joey sighed. Anzu had been right all along. Yami and Yugi had had a falling out. It perfectly explained Yugi's very odd behaviour lately. "What happened?"
Yugi hiccupped and tried to breathe. His nose was streaming, his ears were hot from crying so hard. His little body was shaking feverishly. "I shouted at h-h-him! He did a bad t-thing and I was upset!"
"All right, easy, easy." He scrounged around in his pockets and came up with a tissue. Yugi blew his nose on it with furious vigour. "What happened?"
"I... I... was being chased by two g-guys..."
"Uh huh."
Yugi blew his nose a second time. Though he had eased off his tears, his little body continually hitched in Joey's arms. He was badly upset, and his whole body was in a mess. Joey had never seen him this distressed before. Even bullies could not reduce him to this many tears.
Only Yami could, it seemed.
"And we s-switched... They had a g-gun. He then k-killed t-them..."
Joey lowered his voice. "Yami killed them?"
"Y-Yeah." Yugi dabbed at his wet eyes. "I... I was really hurt that he did it. So I put the p-puzzle a-away after dismantling a piece." He began to fiddle with the damp tissue in his shivery hands. "Now he w-w-won't talk t-to me...!"
"Oh boy." Way to go, Joey. Now you've just opened a nest full of snakes, he thought. "Man what a pig sty, huh?"
Yugi just nodded. He needlessly dabbed at his eyes again, his body still jerking with distress in Joey's arms.
"But they had a gun, Yuug. They would have killed you without hesitation, it sounds like. Why were they even after you?"
He gave a modest shrug. "Over c-cards."
Joey gave him a friendly hug. "He was only doing what he thought was best. I'd fork over my entire identity if I could have a guardian angel like Yami! You're one lucky kid!"
"But now he... he isn't t-talking to m-me..."
"Maybe he just needs time? Come on, you know him! This is the guy who can make a comeback any time he wants!"
"I told him I hated him!" He helplessly blubbered into tears afresh.
Joey squeezed him affectionately. "Go home, bud. Take the rest of the day off. I'll tell Mr. Leeway that you're sick with the flu."
Yugi nodded, though he showed no enthusiasm.
"Maybe Yami needs time. Go on, go home. And have a rest. Things will look brighter when you wake up."
TBC