Disclaimer/Notes: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh!: GX, or any of the characters here, unless otherwise mentioned. I do not own Kazuki Takahashi, and no money is being made off of this piece of fiction. This story was written solely for entertainment purposes, and no copyright infringement was intended. Please, do not sue. All original ideas are original (duh) and belong to me, unless otherwise mentioned. This story takes place sometime during the Haou Arc (?), and contains violence. Enjoy.

Fate

There was no such thing as cold. It was a difficult concept to grasp, and at first it had baffled Juudai. Of course cold existed; he had been cold plenty of times to know that. When the heat went out in their apartment in Rintama, Juudai got cold. When he ran outside with wet hair after being in the hot springs, he got cold. He had assumed that it would be cold here in the dark where only shadows and fog could be found, too. But it was not cold. Juudai had been lying immobile in the purple haze for so long that he had lost all sense of time, but he did not feel cold yet. Come to think of it, he did not feel much of anything, and he was not even bothered by the fact that he was wasting time doing nothing when there was a world or two in need of a hero.

"Our perception of temperature is about a physical balance. Cold is the absence of heat, while heat is relative to the body's core. And none of that matters here."

Juudai kept his eyes closed. Or, at least, he thought that they must be closed, because he could not see anything. He tried to blink but did not know if there had been any change; it was too dark to tell, and he still could not feel. The voice had sounded familiar, though, which piqued his interest. He thought that he might have heard that voice before, back at home or from his middle school, perhaps. It had been present a few times at Duel Academy, too, but that was not nearly so often an occurrence. Juudai did not hang out with many adults on the island, after all.

Something that was not warm—but could not be cold because there was no such thing as cold here—slid down the side of his face, clinking slightly where it hit the ground before slithering along the curve of his neck to find his shoulder. Juudai shivered. He wished he could open his eyes. It touched him again, one thick link at a time, as someone—the voice?—dragged it from his shoulder over his bare chest. Bare? He wondered where his jacket and shirt had gone. In a way, he was glad that it was on his skin, because now it could be identified by touch. Solid, metal, slick; long and linked.

"Do you know who I am, Juudai?" the voice asked in a soft, firm tone. It—he, a man, an adult, an imposing father-figure—did not sound curious or anxious, amused or saddened. The man was not angry. He was like everything else in this place: neither cold nor caring, warm nor cruel. He was empty and apathetic. He, like the boy beneath him, felt very little about anything anymore.

Juudai opened his eyes, and saw gold in the mirror that had appeared over him. He saw ice and hard lines leaning down into his face; he saw black armor and the red of his uniform jacket clenched in a gauntleted hand. The voice was a man, the figure it commanded a boy with a jaded gaze. Juudai swallowed hard, and the mirror grabbed him by the throat with its empty hand, metal-coated fingers digging deep into his skin. He tried to gasp and choked on the action.

"It doesn't matter. Nothing you say or do can stop this."

The words felt like fire in his brain, like electricity sparking across his limbs. Juudai jerked against his captor, his own hands coming up to push roughly at the armored shoulders of the mirror above him. He did not want to die like this. That was not the way that heroes were supposed to go. It was time for his grand escape, he told himself. Now he had to rally his Neospacians, his soldiers, his army, all the darkness that would obey his command. But his palms were wet with panic, his mind rushing from one crazed thought to the next. He could not breathe. The hand on his throat was too tight. Where was his amulet, to protect him in times of great darkness and blinding light? Where were his friends, his E-Heroes, his classmates and sidekicks? Juudai flailed and struggled, but the man—the boy with his face—did not flinch away. He did not relax his grip or show remorse. Because, like Juudai, that man did not feel.

He was released so suddenly that he gagged on the unexpected inhalation, legs curling up to his chest as he rolled onto his side. Juudai coughed and heaved, brown eyes darting about wildly to locate the armored man. "Y-yo-you. . ."

The man was standing with one heavy boot on either side of Juudai, so that the boy had no choice but to see him when he looked up. There was something silver that gleamed in the dark in his hand where Juudai's jacket had been a moment before: it swung slightly from side to side, its weight adding power to its natural momentum. The thick metal contrasted sharply with the mirror's black and gold, with the glossy hint of purple at the shoulders and chest. Where were the helmet and the mask, Juudai wondered, only vaguely aware that those things should have been present. That face should have hidden from him—he did not want a villain to share such a vital thing with the hero.

"Your denial does not make this any less true. You don't have to believe anything, Juudai. All you have to do is die."

"No!" the word came out stronger than Juudai had thought it would. It came out backed by fear and anger, by a peculiar brand of disappointment and childish tenacity. This was not the way it was supposed to be. Juudai was the hero, after all. He was not supposed to—

The mirror pulled his arm up and back, twisting his entire body to slam the full combined weight of armored torso and the metal chain into Juudai's head.

Had it been a whip, Juudai was sure it would have cracked. Had it been made of leather, it would have stunned him and sliced into his face and he would have screamed. But it was not a whip. It was not made of something soft or pliable. The only cracking was done by Juudai; he felt the chain slam into his cheek just below his left eye, felt the bone there disintegrate from the force of the blow. The metal sunk into the skin when it hit, the thin veins of his face exploding from the pressure. He could feel it fracture all the way down to his jaw and up along his eye socket. The tissue blackened, blood blossoming beneath his skin but unable to escape. He could not scream, or gasp, or swallow. He could only tremble as wave after wave of cold shock wracked his body.

The mirror knelt over him, straddling his chest as the man forced Juudai onto his stomach. He wrapped a portion of the chain around each of Juudai's wrists, securing them behind the boy's back before rolling him over again. Juudai let out a small, pained moan that was cut short by a boot to the gut. The man who shared his face sat down on his chest, resting his elbows just above his spiked greaves, hands clasped together loosely between them. He sighed and shook his head, and spoke like a tired father scolding a wayward son:

". . .You're not a hero, Juudai. You're not going to save the day. Everything is not going to turn out all right in the end. That's why you're here. You're here to grow up, and learn that the good guys do not always win," he leaned forward again, armored shoulders hunched up as he lowered his head to look Juudai squarely in the eye. "And no amount of crayons or popsicles are going to get you out of it this time."

Juudai was pretty sure that he was dead. The mirror-man had kept telling him to die—in that dull monotone from the mouth they both shared—and he had finally just given in. He was just doing as he was told, and while he did not like acquiescing to authority, even he knew not to argue with someone like that. The man never wore a mask in the dark place that Juudai spent his days; he had left the red cape on the floor with Juudai's jacket after the second meeting. With each visit, he left behind another piece of his armor, as if taunting the hero with their similarities.

After the cape, it was the spiked shoulder guards. The man seemed infinitely smaller without them. Then it was heavy breastplate, followed by the greaves. He wore a long black jacket and tucked the ends of his pants into his boots. The gauntlets came next, and in a strange way, Juudai relished the feel of the man's hands on his neck every time he tried to strangle him. He wondered idly what would be left behind this time when he came to visit.

Maybe the mirror would leave behind his jacket, then whatever shirt he wore beneath. Juudai would have liked that. It would be nice to see undamaged skin again; he had long since forgotten what his natural tone looked like without a bruise. Would the man look like him all over, or was it only a face that they shared? Juudai almost hoped that they were identical, because it might help him to remember what being whole felt like. He wished the man would smile at him, would reveal some sign that he was amused by the boy's reactions. Mostly, though, he wanted to hear the man say that it was all some kind of joke or bad dream.

Gotcha.

"It's called narcissism," the man whispered in his ear as if reading his thoughts, grabbing Juudai roughly by his nearly broken jaw. His thumb and ring-finger pressed into the place where his back molars should have gone, but Juudai had already lost most of his teeth to dispassionate blows from boots and chains. The boy's lips were split and still bleeding from the last time the man had come and told him to die or grow up. Juudai did not understand why he had to say that every time, because he knew that he was already dead. There was no way for this mirror to exist if he was still alive.

Juudai did not respond, because he knew by now that nothing he said would change the outcome.

Sometimes it was the chain, like the first time, but the man did not like using it. It was messy and inefficient and took too damn long. The man wanted quick results; he wanted to come in, check on Juudai, tell him to die, and then leave. Sometimes he used his hands, but they were too much like the chain. Juudai liked his hands better. Occasionally, Juudai could not see what was used, and only knew that it was hot and made his skin sizzle and blister where it touched him.

This time, it was hands reopening old wounds. It was fingers slowly widening cuts and harsh pressure on broken limbs. It was the methodical use of teeth to scrape away the skin from scorched muscle. Juudai cried, and screamed, and thrashed against his bonds, but it only made it hurt more. The man never sounded angry, never seemed like he was enjoying himself. It was just something that he had to do.

"Please stop. . ." Juudai finally managed to gasp out brokenly, his head lolling to the side as he tried to pull away. The man paused, gold eyes flicking up from the boy's collarbone to his face. Maybe he was taking in the mismatched bruising, or the way his nose had been smashed in. Perhaps he was admiring the sunken quality of the left half of his face, or just the overall structural damage. He touched a hand to Juudai's forehead, brushing back bangs in a gesture lacking any sympathy or gentleness. "Please. . ."

"Do you know who I am, Juudai?"

"I don't care, just—"

"And that's why it won't stop: because you don't know and you don't care. You cannot appeal to my better nature, Juudai. We don't have one."

He turned his head to look deep into those gold eyes, his stubborn sense of pride pulsing in his veins. It arced through him with each beat of his heart, hot and alive. Maybe he wasn't dead yet. Maybe the mirror existed in his mind because he had spent too much time sleeping in the dark. Whatever the case, he felt strong and powerful in that moment. Juudai felt like he could take on anything when he glared at the mirror-man and said:

"I'm not you. I'll never be you."

Juudai lurched up, his abdominals tightening as they lifted his torso, and snapped. His hands were locked behind his back, still tied with the chain. He could not strike his captor, but there was nothing stopping him from burying the jagged remains of his teeth into the mirror-man's face. Juudai caught him by the lower lip, felt his front teeth click together on the other side, grating on the man's perfect white enamel. He snarled into the mirror's face as he fell back to the ground, dragging the man with him. One of the mirror's hands slammed into the ground to the side of Juudai's head, the other clamping around his neck.

He squeezed hard, the web of flesh between thumb and fore-finger forcing the boy's Adam's apple out of its protective casing and into his trachea. Juudai ground his teeth together, felt grit hit the back of his throat when they chipped apart under the strain. His mouth opened in a cough, and the man yanked his head back, pushing down with all his weight. Brown eyes rolled up and back until only the veined sclera was visible. The mirror did not bleed, did not feel, did not care. He was empty.

Juudai went limp beneath the man's hand, mouth slack and eyes quickly clouding over in death. The mirror wiped away the blood that the boy had smeared across his skin with a corner of his cape. He stood and collected his armor.

"You've always been me, Juudai. You're just too young to know the difference between us right now."

There was a boy lying on the ground with his eyes closed, wondering if there was such a thing as cold. He did not remember how he had ended up in the dark where only shadows and fog could be found, and he could not figure how long he had been there. The man decided not to tell him that it was all about balance, that it was just another perceptual fancy of the mind, this time. He held the chain in both hands, folded twice so that it was easier to carry, and entered. The mirror knelt over the boy and leaned in close to his face so that he would see only gold when he finally opened his eyes.

"Do you know who I am, Juudai?"