Disclaimer: Not mine, never were.
A/N: Written for MyAibou as part of the Boiz and Gurlz ficlet-request meme on LiveJournal. She requested a YGO/Danny Phantom crossover featuring Yuugi, Sam and the prompt 'time'. Please do NOT tell me this is not long enough or not a real fic. It is a ONE SHOT and intended to be only a snippet of a possible situation that might occur if these two universes interacted.
Continuity: Pre-Phantom Planet for DP. Post-Memory Arc for YGO.
Stop All the Clocks
© Scribbler, January 2008.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
-- From Stop All the Clocks by W. H. Auden.
Sam stayed for the funeral. It struck her as profoundly stupid how you could get close to someone in such a short space of time if they were just going to be ripped away again so quickly. Three short days and she felt she knew Yuugi Mutou better than half the people at Casper High, and would miss him far more than any of them, too.
"Not everybody becomes a ghost," Danny told her when she asked. She'd wanted ask a couple of times before, but actually plucked up courage enough to say something this time. He answered sadly, obviously knowing why this time was different. He even tried to pat her arm, but she shrugged him off, not wanting her burgeoning feelings for him to influence her feelings over Yuugi.
Lancer tried to comfort her. Lancer. Mr. I-Don't-Care-If-The-Pet-You've-Had-Since-Birth-Was-Hit-By-An-Articulated-Vehicle-And-Spread-Across-Half-of-Amity-Park-You're-Still-Taking-My-Test-And-Heaven-Help-You-If-You-Fail.That was weirder than weird and she didn't know what to say.
When she met Yuugi's friends she didn't know what to say, either. She, Sam Manson, who always had plenty to say whether you wanted her to or not, just stood scuffing her feet at their approach. The two boys were hideously tall and the girl wasn't much better. When she wrapped Sam in a bear hug it made her feel even smaller compared to them. Sam wasn't sure she could've been so forgiving if it'd been the other way around and she'd lost Danny or Tucker.
"He … talked about you a lot," she stammered, caught by the watery blueness of the girl's eyes. They were even bluer than Danny's, and heaven knew she'd pondered that one more times than she felt comfortable discussing. Ever.
"He did?" The way the girl overlaid her grief with delight made Sam's chest constrict so much she had to excuse herself and feel even more like a heel for not staying to talk to them. After all, she was there when he died. Naturally they had lots of questions for her.
It was easy to get attached to Yuugi. He had a way of not leaving anything out; of opening himself up totally, even to strangers, than made it impossible not to like him. Sam wasn't easy to impress, but the way he jumped on the back of the guy trying to mug her, got thrown against a garage door and then asked her if she was okay after she'd kicked the guy's ass … it brought a smile to her lips even now. Separated from her friends and classmates, on the other side of the world, in a city she didn't know, finding someone who spoke English was convenient. Finding Yuugi Mutou was a blessing.
He didn't let her pay for the ice-cream he assured would help her calm down after her ordeal. She ordered sorbet because milk belonged to calves, not people, but watched him eat his dark green paste with interest.
"Seaweed flavour? Seriously?"
"They don't have it in America?"
"Uh, very much no. I don't think any of the misguided troglodytes age and convention insists are my peers would even entertain the idea of sticking saltwater plant life into their mouths. Speaking of which, I really should find them again. They're – I mean some of them are probably worried about where I've gone."
"Sure thing. You said you came to see the museum, right?"
"Among other things."
He didn't let her go until she had Lancer and his megaphone in her sights. Yuugi was full of little gentlemanly ways like that – opening doors and not letting them slam in her face, asking if she wanted to hold his arm to cross the street, refusing to let her pay for anything when she agreed to meet him again.
They weren't supposed to leave the school group or the hotel, but Sam had never been one for conformity, and despite his stature Yuugi made her feel safe in ways she couldn't define. It was like he was totally comfortable with who and what he was, which made a nice change from the hormonal vortex that made up high school life. Maybe it was a cultural thing. Maybe all Japanese teenagers were like that, but somehow Sam doubted it.
He wasn't trying to flirt with her, either. At first she thought that was the reason behind his offer to meet up again. He was genuinely just being nice for the sake of being nice, which knocked Sam for several loops, a twist and a steep drop at a ninety degree angle. A boy who would ask a girl who wasn't a longstanding friend out for food and not expect nookie was rarer than giant doggy-doors in elephant houses. A person like that stood investigating.
Three days. It wasn't enough. Not even three full days, either. An hour the first, then several the next as they trolled around town and he introduced her to Japanese vegetarian cuisine. Sam picked up recipe cards that Yuugi promised to get his grandfather to translate, since Yuugi's own written English was terrible compared to his spoken. He pointed out his favourite foods like an excited little kid on Christmas morning, all but jumping up and down when she liked them too. He told her shyly about a card game he was quite good at when she used her spending money to buy two cookies decorated with little silver dragons with blueberry gumdrops for eyes. They sat on the edge of a huge fountain in the town square and talked about stuff only people who've known each other for years should be able to talk about – hopes, dreams, reservations about the future. He wanted to be an archaeologist like his grandfather and didn't laugh when Sam told him her half-baked pipe-dream about starting her own food brand, like Linda McCartney, carrying on the concept of Ultra-Recyclo-Vegetarianism.
"I believe dreams and memories are what make you who you are," Yuugi said, kicking his heels against the wall because his legs were too short to reach the ground. "Everybody you meet changes you a little bit, even if you don't realise it. The dreams you start inside yourself do the rest as long as you believe in them, kind of like the way my friend Anzu does." Then he'd eagerly told her of his friends, describing them in detail and moving his hands into wild shapes and gestures. Sometimes his voice grew soft and his hand reached as if for a necklace he'd forgotten to put on.
It was clear he valued his friends very deeply, possibly even as deeply as she valued Danny and Tucker. Sam found herself wondering what it might be like to mix their two circles.
It was hard to believe they'd fitted in so much in the few hours before she had to sneak back into her room and pretend she'd been in with Danny and Tucker the whole time, putting a sleeping Dash's hand in warm water and spraying shaving foam over Kwan's chin.
"Finally, you're back," Tucker sighed with relief. "Seriously, Sam, you had us worried."
"Yeah, you look it." She eyeballed their bruises. "Dash woke up?"
"Kwan too." Danny rubbed a lump the size of a duck's egg on his head. "What were you thinking, going out alone with some guy you barley know."
"I don't 'barely know' him."
"You only just met him yesterday!"
"You'd be surprised how much you can learn about a person in a short space of time."
"A few hours, pfft." Danny was jealous and did a terrible job of hiding it, which stirred conflicting emotions in Sam. "I remember you saying something similar about Gregor, and that turned out great – not!"
Gregor and Yuugi were nothing alike! Ultimately irritation emerged the victor in her emotions' battle for supremacy and Sam stalked back to her own room, narrowly avoiding the faculty on the way, with a curt, "You've known Valerie for years and Yuugi's much safer to be around than her."
Just a few hours together, and then … then the flurry of minutes it took for her to dash through unfamiliar streets, run into Yuugi and get totally lost as he grabbed her hand and dragged her behind him.
It didn't matter where she and her friends went, ghosts always found them. They were like magnets for paranormal activity, only this time it affected more than just their little group and the results couldn't be easily reversed by one of Mr. Fenton's inventions. The reflection of leering, vaporous faces in Yuugi's eyes would stay with Sam forever, as would his words as they pelted to what they both thought was safety.
"Stick with me," he'd said, not questioning or refusing to believe ghosts existed and were chasing them. "Don't worry, I'll protect you."
"He protected me," she told his friends on her last day in Japan, before she boarded her family's private jet to return to Amity Park. There was no hole in her life there where Yuugi should've been. There hadn't been time to make one – no exchanged emails, no letters, no appallingly expensive phone calls. The rest of the school trip had already left, but she stayed for the funeral because she couldn't even think of doing anything else. "It was what … I didn't mean for…"
"It's okay," said the girl, Ainzu or Anbu or something. "Well, not okay, but we … we understand."
Damn her for being so forgiving. Damn them all. Things would be so much easier if she'd yelled and tossed blame the way Paullina aimed volleyballs at Sam's head at the beach. If the two boys had said they wished Sam was under the wall when it crumbled, it would've been easier to take, but not this horrible mercy. It wasn't even pity, but genuine forgiveness. They didn't know exactly what'd happened, but they knew Yuugi. They understood what it was to know and be friends with Yuugi Mutou.
"I'm sorry," Sam muttered, inexplicably angry. At herself? At the ghosts trapped in the Fenton Flask who'd caused this? At Yuugi himself, maybe? Or perhaps she was angry at time for not giving her enough of itself to spend with him – for not giving her time enough to strengthen the bond of friendship with Yuugi so she could tell his friends what he'd really saved her from. There was potential in a friendship with Yuugi. You could see he knew what it was to be a friend in more than name. Maybe he could've been part of the elite group that knew Danny's secret and liked them anyway.
Now she'd never know. Time had skimped Sam and she hated it for that.
She would've liked to get to know his friends, too. She would've liked to introduce Yuugi to Danny and Tucker, to see them sample seaweed ice-cream and test her Ultra-Recyclo-Vegetarian concoctions on new taste buds. A mosaic of missed opportunities spread outwards around her like a rock dropped in a pool when she looked at Yuugi's friends now, just like when the ghosts spiralled backwards into the flask Tucker brandished and Danny passed through the rubble to pull out Yuugi's motionless little body. Danny didn't know the boy he held in his arms, and afterwards said that was all Sam could say as she punched the floor and refused to be comforted.
"It isn't fair! There wasn't enough time – you didn't know him! I didn't get a chance to … he didn't stand a … It's not fair. It's not fair!"
"It ain't fair," the gangly blond boy said, hands rammed into his pockets and eyes on the floor. He seemed to be taking this hardest, a muscle in his cheek jumping as he nodded at Sam.
She couldn't disagree.
Three days wasn't nearly enough.
She got the feeling a lifetime wouldn't have been enough.
Afterwards she got on the jet, flew home, went back to her life. She went to school the next day and sat through class, picked at her lunch, walked home to lie on her bed and listen to music. She flipped tracks, turned over, tried to sleep and failed. She let her answering machine pick up when Danny and Tucker called, and again when Jazz phoned to say something about post-traumatic stress and talking to a grief counsellor.
"After all, it helps to talk when you see someone … when something like that happens right in front of you."
"Sweetheart," Mrs. Manson trilled through the door when Sam missed dinner. "Snookums, I know you're feeling icky but you still have to eat."
When she'd asked Sam down a private phone-line who was so important she would acknowledge her family's wealth by chartering the jet, Sam hesitated before replying, "Just … a boy I met."
"Oh Sammy-poo, this isn't that strange gothic nonsense, is it? You're not staying in Japan just so you can dress in funeral clothes and see how they treat death in another culture, are you? Because that kind of behaviour can really blot your copybook with the debutante committee-"
"No! Jeez, Mom, I wouldn't … He was a friend, okay? He was … nice to me …" Sam wasn't able to explain. Three days was just a space of time to someone who hadn't met Yuugi.
She couldn't talk to her parents when she got home because that would've involved telling them about the ghosts they were running from. She couldn't tell them how Danny had to put Yuugi back under the rubble when they realised his neck was broken, how they'd run into the street yelling that that there's been an accident and some kid was trapped when they knew it was already too late. She couldn't talk about how time in that instant went on far too long, crystallising every grotesque detail in her memory – booted feet slamming hard against concrete, car horns blaring, rapid-fire staticky communication over a police radio.
Her answer-phone beeped. "Sam? Pick up or I'm coming over. I know you're there, Sam. Sam … I'm sorry, but … just pick up, will you? Okay, I'm coming over. I'm coming over right now unless you-" The time ran out and Danny's voice cut off abruptly.
"Yuugi Mutou, I hardly knew you," Sam murmured, looking at the fluorescent stars on her ceiling and waiting. "But I really wish I'd had chance to."
Fin.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- From Stop All the Clocks by W. H. Auden.