2580
BS
Saturday, October 25, 2003
Sunday, October 26, 2003

Disc: Yugioh not mine. Not claiming it as such. Am wasting time and energy writing this. Gaining nothing.
Warn: angst. homosexual implications (slash, yaoi).
Note: I was suddenly inspired. I don't know if there are any fics out there like this. I hope not.

Pixels

It was rectangular, ten centimeters in width, and twelve in length. It was slightly thicker than normal paper, but still too small for him to measure. The back was a maroon color, with a golden yellow trim around the edge and a black elliptical shape in the center. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a Magic and Wizards card, but it was shorter and wider. The front of the card held no numbers or battle statistics. A thin blue rectangle was at the bottom, but no text was printed.

Above the blue rectangle, the rest of the card was covered with a person's image.

He was standing to the side against a black background. A thin, white light radiated from the figure. The man -- no, boy -- was dressed in blue. He had short brown hair and intense azure eyes that stared mournfully past the right edge of the card. His skin was the whitest pale and only took on a flesh tone where shadowed. He was beautiful and sad and a lovely image to add to any collection.

The edges of the card were deteriorating from constant contact with the oils and sweat and dirt on the owner's hands. The gray-brown color was peaking through the sides of the card and in patches on the back where it had been scraped and rubbed.

He would have to have it repaired again soon.

The boy who held the card was lethargic and lanky. He had soft blond hair and bright brown eyes that held a stare even more lamenting than the boy on the card. He was wearing a faded pair of denim jeans and a loose white sweater over his pale, skinny body. He was lying on his bed, soft flannel blankets pooled around his hips.

It was unseasonably hot in Japan for this time of year. The air conditioner had burned out over the previous summer, so he had opened his windows and turned on as many fans as he could find. It didn't seem to be helping, but there was little else he could do. Since he turned eighteen, he had been living on his own and he couldn't afford to buy another air conditioner.

The boy turned onto his back and languidly pulled the card from his breast pocket. He held it by the edges -- could never bring himself to actually touch the picture on the card. He stared at it for a moment, then shut his eyes against the memories that looking at his face inevitably brought.

Times were happier then. He had been happy, then. He had had his friends, his sister, and his secret crush.

But that was gone now. It was all gone.

Yuugi lay in a hospital bed, doomed to never open his eyes. His soul was imprinted on a slip of paper, trapped forever and with no escape. He could still remember clearly the maniacal laugh Pegasus had given when he had ensnared Yuugi's soul into a card. After losing their duel, Yuugi had been lost to shadow and his puzzle had been taken by Pegasus. The card with his perfidious expression lay at the top of his deck. As did his grandfather's.

Pegasus had no need for the cards once he had obtained the sacred puzzle, and they were given to Honda, Anzu, and Jounouchi -- along with the cash award -- as they were escorted off of the island.

Yuugi's body had been taken home, and then to a hospital. The doctors concluded that there was nothing physically wrong with the teen, and that he should wake up at any time.

That had been four years ago, and his condition hadn't changed at all.

The bodies of Seto Kaiba and Mokuba Kaiba were removed from the island and placed in medical care. Though they were sent to a private facility, their conditions were just as grave as Yuugi's and Grandpa Mutou's. At least, they used to be. Six months after the return from the island, someone broke into the Kaiba mansion and attempted to rob Seto Kaiba's deck. In the process, the card featuring Mokuba Kaiba's image was torn in half.

That night in the hospital, the life support keeping the boy alive failed and he died. He was announced dead immediately and buried within three days.

It didn't take too long for the corporate conglomerate serving in Seto Kaiba's absence to declare the situation hopeless and seize control of his company. Piece by piece, it was broken apart and sold for its highest value. The estate was auctioned and all of the personal property along with it. The famed dueling deck held by the champion Seto Kaiba was mysteriously absent from the auction. It was presumed stolen and the insurance money was collected and pocketed.

After losing Yuugi, Anzu Mazaki drifted away from the remnants of their group. The last anyone had heard of her, she was living in New York, studying dancing. Hiroto Honda held on the longest to Jounouchi, but then he was gone, First to study in Europe, then in the armed forces over there.

No one had seen or heard from Ryou Bakura since he mysteriously disappeared during the tournament.

The boy with the doleful brown eyes slid out of his bed and started to return the card to its resting place above his heart, but stopped and set it on the dresser. He unbuttoned his jeans and slid them down his muscled legs. He rarely wore underwear anymore, and he stood in front of the open window with just a loose white sweater over his chest. Soon, that, too, was gone and he stood nude in front of the bedroom door.

He bent down to pick up his discarded jeans, and almost missed the whistle his neighbor sounded in appreciation. It was a nearly daily habit. He stripped; she admired. He would never do her. Ever.

He took the jeans into the kitchen area and placed them over the back of the chair. They would be clean enough to wear to work tomorrow, but he would have to wash them before the weekend to get the smell out. His shirt would have to wait to be washed, but he couldn't wear it with the large coffee stain on the front. It would be the green one again tomorrow.

With a sigh, he stepped into the bathroom and began to brush his teeth while adjusting the water temperature for his shower. He grabbed a bar of soap, and then tossed his shampoo bottle into the waste bin. It was empty, and he didn't have enough money to buy more. He would Friday, and he would be ready for his weekly trip Saturday, looking clean and plain. He stepped into the shower and quickly cleaned himself before stepping out and glancing around the room for a towel. He grabbed the closest one and inhaled deeply. He had used it for his previous shower, but it didn't smell dirty, so he used it again.

Clean and dry, he pulled on a pair of holey sweat pants and a thin blue T-shirt from his dresser. While there, he opened the top drawer and pulled out the deck of cards snugly hidden under his winter sweaters. He carried them to the bed and collapsed onto it with a heavy sigh.

Katsuya Jounouchi worked in an executive office, perpetually pushing the mail cart around the lower floors. In the morning, he would start in the mail room and load his cart. Then, over the course of the day, he would slowly creep through sixteen floors of cubicles and -- as he rose higher -- offices until he reached the seventeenth floor. There, he would drop off any mail or packages to a courier who delivered it to the hotshot executives. He was on his feet from eight till seven, and most days it almost killed him.

But it brought money. And he would live. And what could he really expect after dropping out of school?

His feet hurt, and he needed to rest. He was too tired to cook supper, and too poor to order in, and hunger was beginning to make its presence known. If he could go to sleep before the hunger had the power to keep him awake, then he would be fine till the morning. But, he refused to let himself sleep until he had completed this ritual.

Every Thursday night. Take the cards. Spread them on the mattress. Count and make sure each one is there.

He looked at each card as if it were his own -- as if they weren't stolen property. He touched each card and mentally said its name as he packed it away and moved to the next one. The last three he paid more care to, checking them for creases or tears. He studied the picture of the great silver beast and unconsciously compared its gleaming blue eyes to the card still lying on his dresser. He packed them away and returned them to his drawer.

Katsuya Jounouchi didn't duel much anymore. No one really did. The game became associated with tragedy after its champion became comatose during a duel. If that weren't enough, the designer of the game was brutally murdered one night not long after the end of his tournament. His eye had been pulled from his head and his estate had been looted. As with all fads, it quickly fell out of favor and was replaced with a dice game that desperately tried to keep aspects of the card game popular.

With Pegasus J. Crawford's death, all hope was lost of returning the souls of Seto Kaiba, Mokuba Kaiba, Sugoroku Mutou, and Yuugi Mutou to their bodies.

The blond gently took the card lying on his dresser -- held always by the edges -- and returned to his bed. He stretched sluggishly, then hauled himself onto the bed. He stuck the card in his left breast pocket and pulled the blankets over his hips. It was still miserably hot and he couldn't abide being so warm. Sweat beaded on his forehead and immediately rolled across his skin to fall on his temples. His hair was still damp from the shower, but it did nothing to cool his head.

Sleep didn't come easy anymore. It was a constant struggle not to think of his friends in the hospital or his friends overseas. It was hard not to see Mokuba's grave in his mind's eye, devoid of mourners and flowers. The kid hadn't deserved his fate, mentally tortured and locked in a dungeon -- only to have his soul ripped from his body and destroyed. He would never wake up. None of them would.

The blond pulled the card from his pocket and held it in front of his face. The paper was smooth and reflected the streetlights from outside his window. It was getting dark, and he had to stare at the card to actually see it. He knew the shapes and the colors by heart. Dark, then light, then blue, then light, then black. They were the colors of perfection -- the stuff of his dreams so many years ago.

He had always nurtured a crush on the wealthy teenager, from the moment he had first met him. Of course, that initial attraction was significantly crushed when Seto Kaiba had opened his mouth, but the physical lust remained. He never admitted his feelings -- to anyone -- but he had been able to dream. And in his dreams he was happy and loved. But once they were gone, he couldn't dream anymore.

He missed his dreams. He missed that happiness.

He needed to call Shizuka. He hadn't done that lately. She was working as a "special needs" instructor at a school, giving help to the students with disabilities. It made the younger students feel better to be taught by a blind girl. Made them feel less alienated, Shizuka had told him. Katsuya Jounouchi had used every bit of his award money from the dueling tournament to pay for his little sister's operation.

It had been too late, though. They'd waited too long and the operation was in vain. She would be permanently blind, and there was nothing any doctor could do. But Shizuka hadn't seemed too upset about the lack of success, in fact -- although she denied it -- Katsuya Jounouchi suspected that she was relieved. She wasn't happy about all the money her brother had lost, but there was no way to get it back.

It was too late to call her that night. He wouldn't have time to call her the next day, either. But he would call her Saturday, after he returned from the hospital. That was another one of his rituals. Every two weeks he would stop by the hospital on his way home from work. He would check on Yuugi and his grandfather, ask the nurses about their condition, and spend some time telling them about his life and whatever he had heard about their friends.

Neither Yuugi nor the elder Mutou ever made an acknowledgment. But that wasn't what mattered.

He only stayed a few hours at the hospital -- there was too much pressuring to move the comatose men to a nursing home by the doctors. It would be less expensive, they said. And then, that there was nothing else they could do for them. He walked home and took his motorcycle onto the street. He didn't drive anywhere he didn't have to, but his next destination was too far to walk. And his feet were always aching, so they deserved a rest.

The drive was usually quiet and the streets were always crowded. The first time he had approached the private medical center, he had been refused admittance. But he had been persistent and eventually allowed to see Seto Kaiba and Mokuba Kaiba. Sometimes he brought flowers. Sometimes he didn't. After Mokuba died, he usually didn't.

He liked to talk to Seto Kaiba like that. When he couldn't respond with insults and demeaning looks. He had a more difficult time telling Seto Kaiba things than he did Yuugi Mutou. He couldn't talk about their mutual friends -- they had none -- and telling the boy that his company had been fragmented and sold didn't seem appropriate. He didn't know if Seto Kaiba knew of his brother's death, so he never mentioned it. But the things he did tell Seto Kaiba about -- the blueness of the sky, the spring flowers, the long days pushing the mail cart -- at least he was telling him something.

But that was Saturday. And this was Thursday. And he needed to sleep and be able to work twelve hours on Friday. He reached over to the lamp next to his bed and turned the switch. It was dark, but he could still see the card lying on the bed next to him. In the shadow, the colors were darker. But the shapes were the same, and he took comfort in that familiarity. Sometimes, when he held the card in the dark, he could feel a whisper in his ear and he felt that he was not alone.

He could see the colors better in the dark. The individual dots that made Seto Kaiba's skin and hair and eyes. And as much as he could feel not as alone in the night, staring at the individual pixels on the card of the soul of Seto Kaiba reminded him of who he was and why he was alone.

~**~

. . . Well. It didn't turn out as I had hoped. I don't know. I'm not completely satisfied with it. The only image I had in my head for writing this was Jounouchi on the bed, holding the Seto card and crying.

I kept calling Seto "Seto Kaiba" for some odd reason. I was trying to remove it as much as possibly from Jounouchi's feelings. It didn't quite work out.

I have no clue why I wrote this. It just came to me. I hope it made some sense -- any comprehension at all -- and that it didn't bore everyone.

Any and all comments are appreciated. I doubt anyone will read this, but if you do, feedback is craved. Oh, and if you spot any typos or grammar errors, please tell me.