A/N: Written for the Fanfiction Highschool Never Ends Challenge at the AMF. The task was to write a corresponding fic to my first published story on this site – which is The Dreamwalker if anyone's curious (an alternate fourth season where Nightshroud/Darkness infects the Gentle Darkness inside of Jaden and tries to make him despair). :D This one can also be in normal canon, which means you won't have to suffer through a fic more than five years older than this one. :D Enjoy!
And excuse the pun in the title. I'm doing my cardio block so it's all heart failures and ECGs…
Heart Failure
He had always followed his heart. But then it had failed, and he no longer knew where to turn.
Oh, he was aware that that fall had been essential, of course. That he'd needed to find that part of him he'd denied, that had been absent in his duelling and in his prowess. He knew that he needed to, quite frankly, grow up – and that meant the sort of failure his heart had done.
But that still didn't make it any easier. Looking at those people – his friends, precious friends – smiling and forgiving and moving on while he looked at them and still saw their faces as they dissolved into what he had thought then to be permanent death…
He may have accepted it, but he was still afraid. Fine while it slept in his heart, but when the power rose –
Facing Yubel like that had not been without control. He could have killed her, then. He could kill his friends all over again. Even if it was a strange word – in that world were killing meant "sending to the stars" and sending to the stars meant they still lived in another dimension where the laws of the nature didn't exist…
He didn't want to hurt his friends like that again. Ever.