Summary – The choices we make determine many things. How we live. How we die. Gen-fic, no pairing. Non-graphic character death.

Disclaimer – The settings, characters, names, likenesses, and everything else Yu-Gi-Oh!, as always, belong to the talented Kazuki Takahashi. This story is a fan creation based upon, and showing deep appreciation for, his work.

Hereafter

"Join me!"

She looked at him. How he'd changed. It hadn't been easy for him, and it would most likely get a lot worse, too. There was a time when she had favored him. They were of like age, and station. He always tried to maintain this air of solemnity and gravity, that was somewhat at odds with his central nature. She could sense how he really was, under all the conventions he thought he had to measure up to. She even knew why he tried so hard to deny his essential nature, which had once been as lighthearted as hers.

Perhaps it had been his death. No, this self-delusion had started even before then. Perhaps it had been when he had become the wielder of a Millennium Item. It had been such a gradual change, and she'd been so wrapped up in her own affairs, that she hadn't noticed it. She felt bad about that now, seeing what he had been reduced to, and with how very dark his spirit had become.

"No, my friend. I cannot follow down the same path you did," she replied softly.

"It's easy. I can guide you clearly..."

"No, it's not that. I am certain your method would work..."

"Then, why not? You could ease my loneliness while I wait for the return. Surely you don't think help will arrive before you die? You've always been flighty, but under all the silliness you are as responsible as any of us."

"Which is why I have to say 'no'," she said.

"Why not join me? You know – you have to know – how I feel about you – how I've always felt! And, I've seen how you look at me when you thought no one was watching. I know that you hold some interest for me. If you were as I am – we could be together – in death, as we weren't able to be in life."

Sorrow darkened her gaze. He was right, she had held interest in him. If only history had been kinder, she would have gladly married him, made a happy home and borne him children while fulfilling her duties. She knew she was strong enough to do it all – and do it well. She would have been happy to be his wife, and she knew she would have made him happy, too. She would have delighted in teasing his fun-loving nature out from his quiet, repressed shell – while letting some of his calmness and gravity leaven her ebullience. It had once been easy for her to be energetic, and silly, and 'flighty', but lately she had to force herself to be this way. Her rewards were the short-lived smiles of the pharaoh and his court, but she couldn't help but feel as though she were no longer herself, when she forced herself to act this way.

And trying to find her own self is what led her to this crux. It had been years since the previous pharaoh had died protecting Kemet from a horror that must be one of Apep's children – that is, if the uncreator were even capable of generating children. Zorc, wherever it came from, and whatever its genealogy, had seemed like a dark force of destruction – fully capable of destroying all of Kemet.

She could remember everything about the pharaoh who saved them – his smile, his expressive eyes, his intelligence and quick wit, how he'd tense and automatically support her weight with his surprising, wiry strength whenever she pounced on him, and how bright and warm his spirit was. She knew she should have stopped some of the antics that had been acceptable when they were children, but were impermissible once he became pharaoh. But, though others had chided her, he never did. She told herself that if he told her to stop, if he ever asked, she would. Until then, though, she treated him like the older brother he had seemed to be when they were growing up together in the court.

Without him around, though, it was as if the sun had set and not risen again. The new pharaoh did his best, but he was always grim – haunted by the loss of his cousin, and the betrayal of his father, perhaps. She never stepped the least bit out of line or propriety with the new pharaoh. She had to admit he had been very kind to her. No words were ever exchanged, but he knew how much she had lost during that horrible time. Both her 'brothers', as well as her pharaoh, and her mentor, and in a way, the rest of her childhood. He would be upset at her for the course of action that brought her to this point, but she knew he would understand why she had to come here, and risk everything to try to find herself again.

Her skills let her sense the same sort of unrest in him, too. All of them had forgotten the name of the previous pharaoh. Indeed, his reign had been so tragically short that to the population it was as if it had never happened at all. That there was no body to be prepared for the afterlife made his reign seem even more surreal. For this very reason, the new pharaoh had detailed her to a most important and critical task. He had enjoined her to be careful and serious, and to bring all of her skills to bear. She did – not just because her pharaoh commanded her to – but because of how important the task was to her own heart.

He bade her to write down everything that had happened, that she could remember, about the 'Nameless Pharaoh'. They could no longer give him the benefit of his name, they could no longer honor his memory and ensure his place in the afterlife by scribing it on monuments and scrolls, but perhaps a description of who he had been would help him to find his proper place in the afterlife.

It had taken her years to complete. She brought her best skills, as a scribe, as a spirit sorcerer, as one who lived the events alongside the Nameless Pharaoh, and as a friend. The new pharaoh had been most pleased with the results of her labor. It now resided in an ornate gold box, set with lapis, carnelian, and precious silver, to be interred with the new pharaoh when it was time for him to be placed in his tomb.

She kept one part of her work to herself. The early years of the Nameless Pharaoh's life were detailed in the master-work in the new pharaoh's keeping, but they were the dry factual account of the Nameless Pharaoh's childhood. She had also written about that childhood from a more in-depth and personal point of view as one who has shared it with him, and idolized him as only a little sister could. Though there was no blood relation between them, being raised together in the royal court made it seem as if they were related as siblings were. She tried to recall every moment she had ever witnessed or shared of that childhood, hoping that perhaps his lost name would break free in her soul and make itself known to her memory. She desperately wanted to give him his name, again.

And, that is what led her to here. She had stumbled upon the rough drawings among the papers in her master's workroom. Anything of importance that was recognizable to the scribes had been given to them years ago. But, the odd, un-noted drawings, in her master's familiar, scribbled hand (whenever he was making notes for himself, his scribing was atrocious) discarded by the scribes as useless, had become one of her treasures. Finally, she recognized them for what they were – a cryptic, but detailed map of the hidden exit to the royal tomb her master had tried to trap Zorc's emissary in so many years ago.

Her master has returned, after his own death, in a new, sorcerous form – having used the one ultimate spell that a spirit sorcerer hopes to never need to use. In that form, he had helped the Nameless Pharaoh defeat Zorc and seal the evil of the Millennium Items. It was that very sealing that had slain the Nameless Pharaoh, and the loss of that magic sealed her master away, too. She had hoped to use her master's notes to find his body, which she knew was thought buried and lost forever where he had died in the royal tomb. She thought, perhaps, she might be able to speak with him again, in the presence of his own body. Her master had been a very powerful spirit sorcerer, and she knew that, tragically, he had not been able to go to the afterlife.

Perhaps he had been immune to the magic that had taken the pharaoh's name from them – and he could tell her. That had been the hope leading her to try this mad thing. If not, if his ka was no longer resonant with his body, at the very least, she hoped to bring his body back with her, to inter him properly, so that if a time ever came for him to be free of the mighty spell he'd worked on his own ka, he could finally journey to the afterlife.

Instead, she'd fallen victim to a trap – not one mentioned in her master's notes, and not one used by the workmen who crafted the tombs. Belatedly, she recalled that Zorc's puppet, bearing a name she willfully forgot and refused to utter, escaped the trap her master had set for him. He must have found the way to the exit, and placed the trap here for whatever dark amusement guided his actions.

And so, she was dying. Of all the people she would have liked to see in this, her last few moments of life, Shadi was low on the list. She had cared deeply for him, once, and would have gladly spent her life with him – if only history had been different. Since his death, he had assumed the task of guarding the now-inert Millennium Items against the time when the Nameless Pharaoh might need them again. The new pharaoh, and those priests of his court who remember the Nameless Pharaoh, hoped that Shadi's ravings about his return were true, even though such a thing was contrary to everything they knew of life, death, and the afterlife. No one knew why Shadi had become a restless ghost, except that perhaps the manner of his death, and the hold his Millennium Item seemed to possess on his soul, prevented him from joining the blessed dead in the afterlife.

"Join me, Mana! Ease the loneliness pulling at me," Shadi begged. "If you were also a ghost, tied to the Items as I am, we could touch, and be together, until the Nameless Pharaoh's return."

There was that. What if it were true? That the Nameless Pharaoh would return, one day? The Millennium Pendant had shattered the moment the magic had been sealed, and no one had been able to put one piece alongside another to restore it. The pieces would pile together quietly enough, but if someone tried to put a piece with another piece, as if it were a puzzle, to restore it to the shape it had been, the pieces repelled each other. It was the only sort of magic to be detected from any of the Millennium Items, now.

Mana knew her master waited, in some shadowy sort of existence, as did all the ka-monsters of the shadow games, in their massive stone tablets. The new pharaoh had a chamber built into his own tomb just to house all the tablets of the shadow monsters. They all wondered the same thing. Were the shadow games waiting for the return of the magic someday? Was it the destiny of the Nameless Pharaoh to return and restore the magic? Mana could fathom no reason for such a thing, but it was true that she could still dimly sense some remnant of her master's soul in the massive stone bearing his likeness – even though no one could call him forth from the stone since the sealing of the magic of the Millennium Items. Were they waiting for the Nameless Pharaoh to return and release them all?

"Thank you, Shadi, for the task you are fulfilling. You are a good and loyal subject to the Nameless Pharaoh. You are my dear friend. Know that if things had been different, I would have gladly been your wife, and shared my life with you."

"You still can! Join me, waiting for him, and..." Shadi begged.

Mana shook her head. "I can't wait for his return as you do. I will wait, for his return, in the same way my master does."

"You don't mean...?"

Mana smiled weakly, feeling the bonds of her spirit slip just a little closer toward death. She was close enough. It was time. "I do. I'm sorry, Shadi. Please, convey my apologies to our new pharaoh, that I can no longer help him, but tell him I will wait patiently and do all I can to help the Nameless Pharaoh when he returns."

Mana gasped as the pain of her injuries spiked, and then abruptly abated. It was now, or never. "I will join my master, and wait for my friend – now known as the Nameless Pharaoh – hereafter!"

"NO!" Shadi, ghost though he was, slumped to his knees as Mana's ultimate spell ripped her ka from its mooring in her body, and wound it permanently into her weakening ba. Mana's spirit-monster, the one she had not been able to call forth since the sealing of the magic, flickered in the air above her body's head for a moment. She appeared to be the same age as she had been when the Nameless Pharaoh had died. She nodded her head acknowledging Shadi, smiled, and disappeared. At that same moment, in the tomb prepared for the current pharaoh, next to the stone slab bearing the image of the Dark Magician, a new stone slab formed. Mana's spirit-monster, the Dark Magician Girl, etched itself into the stone.

"No!" Shadi reached toward Mana's now-lifeless body, and tried to take her into his arms. They passed through her, as they passed through everything now. The only things he could touch, the only things that were 'real' in his new reality now, were the Millennium Items. He could hear them, all of them, except for the broken one, whispering in his mind, now. He had hoped that Mana, with her lighthearted cheerful ways, could help him distract himself from the dark whispers of the Items, as they fought to free themselves from the powerful magic restraining them. No one could sense this magic but for him. To all others, the Items were inert. Only he knew that the magic was still in them, whispering in the dark, while it tried to fight its way free from the power that sealed them. The Nameless Pharaoh. All for the Nameless Pharaoh. It was all on him now. Shadi just hoped he could hold out – long enough – for the Nameless Pharaoh to return.

The Millennium Items wove silken whispers through the ghost's mind. He clutched his head, and hoped that the Nameless Pharaoh would return – soon. Before he went mad.

–end–

Author's note –

Thank you, as always, to Lucidscreamer for helping me wend my way through the intricacies of the most current understanding of ancient Egyptian beliefs and practices.

This odd little story is what happened when I tried to make some sense of Shadi's inscrutable behavior in the series. Driving Pegasus completely mad (as well as giving him the power of the Millennium Eye) and aiming Malik's insane rage directly at the pharaoh were only the most prominent examples of Shadi's less than helpful actions. I'm not convinced that Mana is the Dark Magician Girl in the same way that Mahaad is the Dark Magician, but the concept worked well for this one-shot.