Ye Who I Have Loved
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's series.
Pairings: Established Rua x Rally. Referenced disregarded (canon) Jack x Carly, one-sided (canon) Mikage x Jack, one-sided (canon) Stephanie x Jack.
Summary:
A fragment of Earthbound God Uru burrowed itself into Rally Dawson after Rudger Goodwin switched places with him during his first Duel against Fudo Yusei. Now, the entity is stirring, threatening to consume Rally from within, unless Team 5D's acts quickly.
"His condition is worsening," Schmidt diagnosed bleakly.
Other than Satellite's steadfast doctor, Team 5D's, Martha, and a crush of frightened orphans in the woman's care clustered around the bedridden child.
The matron pressed a newly wrung washcloth to feverish Rally Dawson's forehead.
"Where are those clods?" Jack Atlas clenched his knuckles till they whitened, a complaint his mates knew he levelled against Nerve, Taka, and Blitz. "They should have been looking after him!"
"I asked them to fetch some items," the physician informed.
"And the mayor's sending a med team," Fudo Yusei added.
"A lot of good it will do!" Crow Hogan griped, not that he didn't appreciate Jaeger's aid.
"That mark is the problem."
The source of Rally's pain needed no introduction. Glowing sinisterly on the boy, the symbol of Uru, de facto boss of the Earthbound Gods, polluted Rally's skin. Purple spider venom clawed a web up his arm, ever-expanding and constricting. How long before the Immortal's miasma choked him dead?
Izayoi Aki assisted Martha tightening the blankets.
Ruka stared at her brother, whose fingers crimped the sheets.
"Rally, hang in there!" Rua prayed.
"Judging by the toxin's spread, it will reach Rally's heart before help arrives. Once it does, I'm afraid –"
"Don't!"
"Rua…" His twin wished she could console him.
He was trying hard not to break. "How could this happen?"
"It must have been then," Yusei made an educated guess, "during Rudger's and my battle, when he tagged Rally in, and Rally destroyed Uru to lose the Duel. It's the Earthbound God's final curse."
Rex Goodwin had changed the game. The Earthbound Gods spurned another five-thousand-year hibernation cycle.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"We can suck out the poison!" Crow proposed.
"That only works in movies," Aki remonstrated. The medical textbooks she'd been reading payed off.
Schmidt confirmed her analysis.
Rua wouldn't accept it.
This was magic they were dealing with! The rules of science didn't exactly apply!
Reacting to his unsinkable determination, the Crimson Dragon donated support.
Rua's birthmark, proof of his hard-fought Signer status, pulsed like the heart it depicted.
Everyone but Rua gasped.
The Mayans and Aztecs practiced human sacrifice placating their deities. To save the one he loved, he had to be ready to make the same offering. To rip out his beating heart.
"R-Rua, you can't," Rally pleaded, voice deathly hoarse. "It'll kill you."
"And if I do nothing, it'll kill you!"
"W-why you gotta be like that? Mr. Hero all the time."
Rally sounded almost…teasing?
"He's right!" Jack interrupted, argumentative. "Why's it have to be you? Why not any of the rest of us?"
Aki whispered the reason in his ear.
"They're WHAT?"
Were it not for the grim prognosis, Rua might find it priceless that "Three Lady Friends Jack" was last to the party.
He took Rally's hand.
Concentrated wickedness poured into his bloodstream. Black mist gradually replaced Rua's golden spheres. The thousand stings of fire ants, the famished young of Azcatl, ruptured from his spleen.
So this is what being gobbled up by an Earthbound God feels like. He nightmarishly relived the death sentence Misty sanctioned upon Divine.
Jail was too forgiving a fate for that homicidal lunatic.
"I will be," Uru's baritone exited Rua's mouth, "reborn!"
Like Rudger, he'd become a man with two gods. Sun and moon coincided. Weeping idols cried a river of tears leading back to the land of the not-yet-dead.
"Rua! Snap out of it!"
His sister's encouragement as his anchor, he focused on implementing Crow's long-shot plan. Isolated the evil threading Rally's subconscious and pulled, drawing the demon from its nesting chasm.
Uru fired back, spewing darkness to the four corners of his mind.
You couldn't oppose a totem spirit and hope to come away unsinged.
Rua prevailed, though. He'd do to Uru what the Dark Signers did to Ancient Fairy Dragon. Lock the monster in a cursed prison. The prison of his soul.
The light of the Crimson Dragon subsided, a shrinking bubble assimilating Uru's hatred. Rally sank down in his pillow, possession-free, Rua tumbling after him.
"It-it stopped!"
"Thank goodness!" Martha crossed herself.
Reduced to the human equivalent of a PB&J sandwich, too exhausted to get up, Rally cocooned a similarly sleepy Rua between his arms. Ruka enlarged the embrace into a threefer from behind.
Inside, the underground arachnid clicked its chittering mandibles. Rua drowned out the racket, listening devotedly to the thumping of Rally's cleansed heart.