Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters.
Warnings/Notes: This story is meant to follow the world established in the beautiful, immersive, whirlwind experience that is "Glass" by Bellamy Taft. Please support the amazing original author and story, you won't be disappointed!
Morbid curiosity, that's all it was.
Ryou stared at the obituary, nursing the faintest thought that it was too brief and coming away with bloodied hands. There were words enough to fill both and transfer the burden of their weight. He flexed his fingers cautiously against the keyboard and flinched at the phantom pain, bones stiff and twisted beyond the flesh.
Why would anyone bury a body that looked like that?
Perhaps they hadn't.
The image of Pegasus with artificial eyes lingered when he closed his own, so fierce and unwavering that he refused to sleep that night. They were the wrong color. Not just an awkward shade of too-dark brown in place of mahogany, but a flash of emerald too close to Devlin's. People tolerated Pegasus Crawford, they did not know him. And so his eyes were green because maybe that was right but it didn't matter anymore. He did not paint self-portraits and it didn't sting to auction his wife's for money.
Ryou bookmarked the article and read it to keep the nightmares at bay.
The fourth night flecks of red spattered across the glossy sheen of jade, staining Crawford's eyes the colors of Christmas. Ryou choked in his sleep, breaths burning through his chest into his throat. They did not belong. But then, nothing rightfully belonged with Pegasus Crawford. His eyes were lidless and did not close.
Some people might have said he looked at peace.
Ryou woke dry mouthed and stumbled to the bathroom to empty his stomach.
Pegasus hadn't replaced his eye while alive and wouldn't have done it in death.
At least, Ryou hoped he hadn't.
There had been no mention of an open casket, no more than a sentence on the private funeral.
As he read the obituary for what felt like the thousandth time – it was well past a hundred by now – he asked himself why they hadn't defaulted to cremation.
And, at first glance, it was simple.
The same reason a public figure had a private funeral. Everyone knew what Crawford was in the end.
No one wanted his ashes.
He housed a demon for a decade. Pegasus Crawford broke him in twelve months.
(Why had the spirit stayed away these twelve months?)
The weight of his stare left Ryou with sleepless stupors of energy shots and tear-stained letters. After the lawsuits settled in court and the money vanished, the guards who managed to avoid prison virtually disappeared. Sheer luck lead him to Croquet, who had taken a new name and lived as a groundskeeper in the Danish countryside, but he never managed to call.
What was he supposed to say?
I don't want any of the things you let him steal from me: safety, life, sanity – I won't even ask for time – just tell me if you buried that bastard with the stain of his sin on his face.
He printed out the obituary, because eventually the link wouldn't work anymore, and included a copy in a letter to Amane. She always knew what to do with his nightmares.
In reality, it was a neighbor's son who found the letter on his way to school and ran it back to Ryou's mailbox, making a paper airplane as he went. But he felt her with him as he picked it up an hour later.
Amane.
He tore open the envelope and scoured its contents for anything she might have written back. One detail of the obituary drew his attention for the first time in a thousand: the tiny town in France where Pegasus had been laid to rest.
His father didn't argue the money for plane tickets when he called to ask, and assured him that if it would help to get away for a while; he could go wherever he wanted. He did not ask where and it was with more than a little bitterness that Ryou reminded himself Mom would have. Amane would have. He clutched her letter, still creased like a paper airplane, to his chest. The obituary was a wing and jutted out from his hold. Even Pegasus would have.
Why are you doing this to me? I'm supposed to be free of you.
He dreamt twice on the plane.
"What's the matter Ryou? You look so glum."
Pegasus sunk into the couch and Ryou resisted the urge to scoot away as much as he was able. He stared hard at the ground and waited for the threat that lingered in every beat of silence. Pointedly softened stares that said, 'ignore me, and you'll go back under it.'
He lifted his eyes rather than push his luck and found betrayal in the set of Pegasus's lips. He half expected a demand not to ask about Kaiba, but for all the times he had anticipated the man's cruelty, it was replaced just as naturally with compassion.
"I'm sorry."
He cried too much in front of Pegasus, who would occasionally vent the exasperation in clipped remarks or the subtle clenching of his hands to fists. The only time Ryou's tears really mattered, he hadn't.
"Are you ready for dinner?" He asked, because Pegasus didn't have the capacity to break his schedule and offer what they both knew he needed, to be alone.
Ryou nodded and tried not to resent the sandwich that didn't take up nearly enough of his fifteen minutes. The first tears he didn't manage to sniff back landed on the bread as Pegasus offered a bite.
"I'm sorry." He choked, voice shaking, "I'm sorry." He forced the bread to the side of his mouth, too thick to swallow against the lump in his throat, and looked away to get it down. Talk so he doesn't have to. Tell him so he doesn't have to ask you. "I always write to my sister." He swallowed the sob that shook his shoulders, "Please, I-"
Pegasus moved the sandwich back to his mouth and held his eyes, "This." He said, tapping the straight jacket, "Only comes off for the letter. Do you understand me?"
Ryou took his meaning and ate.
When he was twelve years old, his father threw the drawer of pens and pencils away in frustration. "Enough with the letters, alright Ryou? Enough."
When he was sixteen, his father told him to write them in his own apartment.
Pegasus Crawford offered a pen with gold ink and dried his tears with a thumb.
He shook the thought from his head and drowned it out with music until he fell back into sleep.
Pegasus's decaying corpse forced a moan from his lips. Worms crawled through the vents of his ribcage and spiders made their home in the porous remains of a leg. Finally, for once, Pegasus Crawford was the same as everyone else. His money meant nothing and his affluence was no savior. He was food for the earth, though Ryou doubted he nourished anything.
The gag reflex nearly woke him up when a mouse broke off the thumb that'd wiped his tears, but it was the eyes, brilliant green against white, that jolted him awake.
The glass hadn't cracked under the weight of the dirt and seemed impenetrable to the stain of thick mud.
Even as he rotted, Pegasus watched without blinking.
The burial made sense when he saw the two tombstones beside each other.
At first glance, he told Pegasus he hoped they found each other.
With the second, he asked how it felt to make a home out of holes and dirt.