Heart Half Empty

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh, as much as I would like to. Not sure who the Japanese artist is, but here in the US, Warner Brothers has the rights to it.

Summery: This is NOT a song fic, though it is inspired by the song by Ty Herndon. Yugi has always wished to be free of the pain in his life, and he'd thought that the puzzle his grandfather gave him would be the answer. But it would take the friendship of another Millennium Item holder to convince him that he was strong enough to leave his past behind.

A scream rang out into the night, coming from a house on a small suburban lane in a city called Domino. A scream of a terror so gripping none who heard it could fail to act. Including the holder of the Millennium Ankh who heard the cry from the street.

Diane Kelley shuddered as the cry reached her out on the street. It sounded like the cry Shaddi had let out just before dropping the ankh in her hand and telling her to take good care of it.  

WHAT CAN I DO, THOUGH? She thought, I AM ONLY ONE WOMAN. So she walked on, heading from the bus station where she'd parked her car to Domino City Hospital where she worked as an ER nurse.

The place was chaos as she entered, but she immediately gravitated to one small patient. The patient was a boy who looked to be no more than 10 or 11 years old, with wide, trusting violet eyes and spiky hair that was dark brown or maybe even black in the back, a flaming crimson in the middle, with brilliant true blond bangs.

Then, her eyes flew to the puzzle on the broken chain. It was gold and shaped like a pyramid, with an odd, Egyptian artifact looking sort of eye in the top.

She gasped.  IT'S THE MILLENNIUM PUZZLE. . .WHICH MUST MEAN THIS BOY IS YUGI MOUTO!

He looked up to her, straight into the gentle, jewel-like blue eyes, and suddenly knew he could trust her. Then he had the same shock of recognition as he spotted the ankh pendant she wore.

Diane bent over him, growling angrily at the bruises she saw all over him, including the two fresh welts on his eye and chin.

Yugi winced as another sharp pain tore through his chest from his two broken ribs. Takada Mouto had done more damage this time than he ever had. Then, with a sigh, he let the darkness claim him.

Later, after the emergency room doctors had patched him up as well as they could, Diane sighed. The boy would need surgery to repair the lung his rib had punctured, and if things were as she thought they were, Yugi's father would not be amenable to that.

"Diane" a rich, refined tenor rang out from behind her, "Shouldn't you be heading home?"

"Good evening, Seto," she replied, "I know I should be, but Angela is asleep by now, and with Mike no longer there I have nothing else to go home to, ne?"

"And what thought is it you hold in that pretty head of yours?" Seto smiled, dark eyes twinkling, running his hands through his straw-colored, collar-length hair. "You know I can always tell when you're planning something."

She giggled, then her face went deadly serious. "I was contemplating what I was going to do about the situation young Yugi here has found himself in."

"What can you do? Takada" it seemed as if the 13-year-old head of Kaiba Corporation fairly SPAT the name, "is his father. And though we all know what is going on, considering how valued a member of the community the man is, proving it is going to prove quite difficult, I'm afraid."