Don't worry, o great owners of the YGO franchise, I am not trying to make any money off your licensed property, which I know belongs to you, not me.
Halloween's supposed to be the night ghosts walk. But ghosts walk every night here in Domino City, don't they? Here where everyone was someone in a former life it seems sometimes to Pegasus, who wasn't anyone before he was who he is, and who's standing over by the punchbowl now, wondering why he keeps coming to these damn parties Yuugi throws every year. Someone's spiked the punch of course. He knows that without tasting it; it's what happens at these kids' parties. The idea bores him; the whole party bores him, but he's here now and he might as well stay long enough to be polite. Also to be polite, he pours a cup of punch and sips it, tasting cheap vodka under the tropical redness of the flavor.
Music spews from the little stereo Yuugi's set up. People dance by, more or less in costume. There's Jounuchi dressed as Freddy Krueger, dancing with Kujaku Mai, who's wearing a miniscule pirate costume. Yuugi and his Other go by in matching vampire outfits, and he thinks he can see Bakura beyond them. Only that can't really be the King of Thieves in the disco outfit, can it? It's probably the Dark Malik instead, Pegasus thinks. He stifles a yawn, sips a little more punch, discretely checks his watch.
He's wondering when he can make a polite getaway, when he sees it, the flash of blue just past the doorway. A skirt, he thinks, one of those Disney Princess costumes; in a party full of kids you're bound to see a few of them. But he follows, god alone knows why.
Footsteps echo on the path outside the house. Just his? It doesn't sound like it. He hears someone else breathing too, light breaths, soft breaths, and he follows them down the path through the garden almost to the gate beyond. He can see her now in the shadows, her hair a cloud, her dress a faint blue blur.
"Cynthia." His lips just form the words, he's very sure he didn't say them out loud, but she turns and looks at him with the blue eyes he remembers.
"Pegasus?"
You can't say 'but you're dead,' not to someone who rushes to you as soon as they see you, who's arms go around you right where you remember them going, just barely reaching your neck, little fingers clasped behind your head. You can say 'I must be dreaming,' but it's a little stupid when you know you're not. And besides, it will only make her laugh, and she's already laughing a little at him, and at the shocked look on his face.
She laces her fingers between his just like she always did, her little fingers, in between his big ones. It must hurt, he thinks, and it's the first time he's ever thought it. "Walk with me," she says, and they're going back through the garden again, and he smells her perfume, stronger than the scent of burning leaves that hangs like a haze over the city.
'How long has it been?' he wants to say, but he doesn't. 'You're a ghost, aren't you?' he could ask that too, although he already knows the answer. Instead, he just moves closer. His arm finds the familiar place around her waist, his fingers just lightly resting on her stomach in front. They walk past rose bushes whose last withered flower pods still cling spikily to the stems, under trees whose leaves rustle beneath their feet. After a while, Cynthia leans closer too. Her head rests where it always rested, next to his right arm, just below her shoulder. Her hair floats up and tickles his face just like it always did.
"How long can you stay?" he asks her.
And, "not long enough," she says, "not as long as I want to." She doesn't give him any crap about how she's always with him. She doesn't tell him she's watching from Heaven, and that's the same as being together. Cynthia just walks, and Pegasus just walks, and their bodies are pressed together like they haven't been for 15 years and more now.
And after a while, but not long enough, nothing could ever be long enough, he thinks, she looks up at him. He sees tears in her blue eyes as she says "good-bye." And maybe he's crazy, maybe that's what it is, because he tastes tears too, her tears, or his tears, he doesn't know which, as she leans up and kisses him, her lips just barely reaching his just like always.
"Good-bye," he says back, and he bends for a kiss, but she's already gone.
The Creator of Duel Monsters walks back into Yuugi's party alone. He wonders if he was ever not alone; what does he have after all, to show that she was there, except for the taste of tears on his lips, and those could be his own tears. A quick backhand with one ruffled cuff, and all traces of the tears are gone. He looks like he's always looked, like an adult trapped at a childish party.
'Some more punch,' he tells himself, 'a couple glasses of that stuff and maybe I'll be thinking straight again.' But not right away, he thinks, not while her taste is still on his lips.