Consequences

by dib07

Based on The Pyramid of Light. Yugi returns to his life after Anubis has been fought and dealt with. But the Pharaoh underwent a costly battle, which leaves Yugi with a question. Can spirits still die?

A Yugioh one-shot

Consequences

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Summary: Based on The Pyramid of Light. Yugi returns to his life after Anubis has been fought and dealt with. But the Pharaoh underwent a costly battle, which leaves Yugi with a question. Can spirits still die?

Warning: T due to blood, Yami and Dan Green.

A/N: This is just a little something I thought up. Enjoy! All reviews will be appreciated and replied to!

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Please do not persuade me to ship characters, and please tolerate any shipping of any characters.

I write the characters as I envision them. Nothing more and nothing less.

Yugi was a little shaken. I mean really, having some dead guy come back after 3000 years to kill off his spirit of the millennium puzzle? Just like that? And it was Yugi who had unwittingly summoned Anubis by completing the puzzle?

Well, the day was saved. Yami (once again) had fought off this mad, demonic Anubis and everything more or less had settled into normality. Kaiba begrudged it all, naturally. He had to get checked over by a doctor for his injuries and then contact his insurers over the damage of his building. But most of all, he begrudged his failure. Yami had overcome him once again with uncanny resilience and fortune and had saved the day.

Anubis had sunk into the black grime of defecation, his last cache of power withering until his presence wasn't just gone but obliterated.

Yugi's friends came to see him, laughing and slapping him on the back as if he was some hero in a movie who had narrowly avoided disaster.

It was a duel worth remembering.

And Yugi was a little shaken. He had had many foes before, and not all of them wished his death, but some did, and it never got any easier. Who knew that duelling could be so dicey?

It seemed that a lot of people wanted the Pharaoh torn limb from limb these days, like Malik for example.

Yugi really wanted a holiday.

Still, the day was done. After hiring a taxi to take them home, Yugi and Grampa had to leave Kaiba and his partially demolished stadium. Besides, it was growing fervently cold and rain had started to fall.

Tired and wane from the fight, Yugi was quite happy just to recline in the passenger seat of the taxi as the car drove through the tireless streets of Domino.

Evil always finds us. Yugi thought with dismay. He tried not to let it worry him. After all, he had Yami to protect and guide him.

He didn't notice anything unusual for some time. He and Grampa got home late when the grandfather clock in the hall struck half past eight. The rain gushed outside like a yowling monster: as if in reprisal of Anubis's defeat. Grampa put the dinner on and Yugi was left sitting by the parlour window with his head in his hands, elbows resting on the back of the couch. The clouds had claimed the skies in a dark array of stormy bluster. Leaves freely scattered over the road as the wind drove them from behind.

Sometimes, sometimes tough duels scared him half to death, but he never let on how very frightened he was. Now and then he imagined Yami drawing the wrong card, or summoning too weak a monster to absorb life point damage. He saw him losing. Was that so wrong: to worry? He wholly trusted his darker half, but his anxiety bested him at times.

The puzzle was such a weighty thing round his neck. It was the anchor to Yami's life: the iron ball and chain that connected him to Yugi's world. It was also the door that kept him a prisoner.

He wondered what Yami thought of the duel, and if he too had solemn doubts. It was hard to estimate Yami's worth as he duelled. He kept his thoughts and opinions mainly to himself and rarely let loose any foretelling weaknesses. He couldn't keep all things private of course: Yugi knew all or most of his clandestine ways, despite Yami's poker-face. But today hadn't been easy. Yami had nearly died today. He had too potently felt the pharaoh's life-energies slip out of him like blood gushing through a leaky tin. Anubis had played Kaiba and Yami from the start like fools.

Yugi dropped his hands away from his face and rested his fingers on the puzzle's warm surface. "Yami? Do you..."

There was a call from the kitchen, interrupting his gentle words. "Yugi! Dinner's on the table!"

"Oh, right." Letting the puzzle hang from his neck, he left the parlour unhurried, and went to eat at the table.

x

During dinner, something felt off. It was a distracting and disquieting feeling. Yugi felt fine otherwise. He wasn't terribly hungry after what had happened, but Grampa's roast beef really did invigorate his appetite and before long he had eaten what was on his plate, done the dishes and got ready for a bath. But the feeling remained. He seemed to carry it around with him like it was a bad odour. It was not often that he got these feelings, and they were hard to categorize into words. He felt sombre. Sore. Yet physically he was fine: just tired.

Was he coming down with something? Like a cold? Or had he pulled a muscle and wouldn't truly feel it until morning?

During his bath, Yugi always left the millennium puzzle on the side by the sink. Though it would do nothing to get the gold wet, he liked to keep the item pristine. While the hot bath water was running, Yugi removed the chain necklace. As soon as he had lifted its weight from his neck, the bad feeling disappeared. Yugi frowned and looked at the inverted pyramid with a raised eye brow. Experimentally, he slowly placed the heavy iron chain links around his neck once again, feeling slightly foolish. His test proved interesting. That bad feeling returned like invisible prison bars shrouding his very soul. His strength felt somehow porous, hurt. As if a hole was growing in his chest.

Quickly he removed the chains and placed the puzzle on the sink. At once he felt whole and lucid again. He pouted at the puzzle. "Yami," he asked while bath water continued to pour into the tub and steam clouded the mirror. "Is everything okay?"

He awaited an answer. Usually such answers were returned swiftly, as though Yami had been pending for his questions as if he was a mere telephone connection away. But no answers rejoined his confusion. And this was rare. Ever since their bond had cemented and become unique, Yami had never failed to reply unless he was heavy in sleep, and that was only if Yugi wore him out in a duel, which was even rarer.

The bathwater could not be wholly ignored, and besides, maybe Yami was sleeping? Yugi turned the faucets off, slipped out of his uniform and immersed himself in hot, bubbly water. The rain was still splattering outside with all its feral energy and it helped Yugi feel comforted when he was inside and the awful weather was outside.

When he was dressed in his starry, blue pyjamas, he took the puzzle with him into his bedroom. He flicked the light switch on and his private chamber was filled with warmth. The attic window above his desk was flooded with water so much so that he could not see out of it, and the clouds above rumbled their unrest.

He sat on his bed and lifted the puzzle to his face. "Yami?" He called.

No answer.

"Yami?" He almost felt like shaking the millennium item to get an answer as if the gold puzzle itself was sentient. Maybe it was. If he dropped the puzzle, would Yami feel it?

Yugi didn't understand. Why wasn't Yami answering him? Everything had gone well in that duel. The crazy psychopath was beaten. They had won. So was Yami... avoiding him? But why? What had Yugi done to earn such non-communication?

Yugi put the puzzle on his pillow.

Something wasn't right.

He should have known it earlier... felt it earlier. But he had been too preoccupied with other things.

And maybe Yami was just sleeping?

Either way, Yugi's curiosity bound him to the choice he made next.

Jerking awake, he found himself in his soul room. He left the bed and scooted toys aside with his socked foot.

He came to his open door and looked out across the breach that separated their rooms. Yami's door stood tall and ominous – closed as always with the eye seemingly watching. Yugi left his soul room and approached this door that was also cold to the touch. It had always been this way.

He knocked a few times on its austere surface, sure that he'd get an answer this time. "Yami? Let me in, I need to talk to you."

When no reply came he pressed his ear to the cold surface. There was no sound from within, nothing but a slow vibration thrumming through the stone.

"Why won't you reply?" Yugi backed away from the door, his brow furrowed.

He knew it was wrong to just go in without Yami's consent. It was his heart he was entering after all: a heart full of mazes, traps and doors. So he was entering a mine-field of danger. But today he had to risk it.

He pushed down on the iron handle and the door loomed inwards silently: inviting him to its deadly depths. Yugi tried to peer in ahead of himself as he took ginger steps into Yami's demesne. It felt dark at first, but as his eyes adjusted, he realized it was not so. Because Yami had not closed his heart off from Yugi, the young duellist could see the pharaoh's world quite clearly and quickly. As the darkness receded away as if Yugi was the sun that broached this realm, he could see stairs going this way and that, doors upside down and along vertical walls that twisted into horizontal feats. There were catwalks of stone that made very little sense, and stairways that ran along the ceiling in perfunctory ways. Yes, he had been here before, and seeing it again was always a daunting experience. Everything was so spacious too, and confusing.

"Yami?" He closed his hands over his mouth and called. His shout seemed to bellow up the stone walls and shift the peace that was Yami's tomb.

Yugi waited, but he was growing impatient waiting for an answer that wouldn't come, so he stepped forwards, intent on finding him. He'd just have to be careful with the traps bedizened about the place.

When he had barely gone six paces, he saw something red on the flat stone floor. He stared at it for a moment, thinking that perhaps Yami had dropped something on the way in. But then he stooped to take a closer look, and his fingers smoothed over it. The red stuff came away wet on his fingertips. It took him many slow seconds to recognize the stuff he was looking at.

It was blood.

Yugi drew in a cold breath and looked suspiciously about him for more of the same thing.

He was confused.

Could spirits... bleed?

He rose unsurely to his feet, scanning the stone floor and partitions. He soon resumed his quest, finding a few more delicate droplets of red as he went. In an ironic, sick kind of way, they acted like breadcrumbs from a Hansel and Gretel story.

Now all he needed was a house made out of sugar and sweets.

Old streaks of worry rumpled his otherwise anxious condition. "Yami? Are you here?" Darn it.

He moved on, keeping one hand on the wall in case of getting disorientated in such a vast, compelling place.

The maze around him threatened to spill its secrets, its dark promises. Yugi tried to look all around, and followed the trail of blood as he did so. The puddles were thin, and small. But consistent.

He heard a scrabbling sound close by: the sound of heels scrunching heavily across stone. Yugi ran towards the sound, disregarding his inbred caution. He came to a low wall that segmented two sets of stairs. He looked out over the maze that spun below him. There, on one staircase was a figure clad in blue.

"Yami!" He cried shrilly.

The figure seemed to stoop forward as he halted, and looked around furtively. "Yugi?"

Yugi ditched all caution now. He sprinted along the wall, breached a gap in the centre, and started running down old stone steps to close the gap between them. But Yami didn't wait. He started limping on again, sauntering down the stairs with cold apathy.

Yugi hated how large and dead this place was, and then scolded himself for thinking that. He had just verbally trounced Yami's heart.

"Wait! Pharaoh! Hold on!"

Yami halted again as if someone had tinged painfully inside of him. But wait he did. Yugi skidded and almost tripped head over heels, but he balanced at the last moment and charged down the stairs until he was at his Dark's side. But Yami didn't seem all that happy to see his protégé. "Yugi, what are you doing here?"

"What? Am I not allowed?" He asked, gesturing out with his hands.

Yami grumbled and continued down the stairs one step at a time.

"Wait," Yugi kept closely to his side, "where are you off to in such a hurry?" As he quizzed Yami, his eyes darted to and fro over his slim body to detect for wounds.

Could spirits have wounds?

A recent splatter of blood had been left on the rim of stairs beneath Yami's staggering shadow.

Since Yami didn't answer, he asked, "Why aren't you resting?" After all, he had done some very intense duelling, and Yami usually slept after such rigorous duels. His resting periods varied, but there was no way he had slept and then be up so soon. "And I think you're bleeding. Yami..."

"I am fine." Snorted his reply. His venomous reprisal was not what Yugi had been expecting.

Yugi rolled his eyes. He was playing the tough guy. "Look, you almost died today. A second time. You lost your body once, and now you nearly lost your spirit. You think I'm going to just leave you alone?"

Yami's acidic defence softened somewhat. "I'm looking for somewhere dark. And safe."

Yugi looked around briefly at the uniform maze all around them. "Yami, this are no other places to go."

As he watched, the pharaoh stumbled and fell back, sliding down the last three steps. He reacted with a gasp of pain before scrunching his eyes shut. Yugi met him at the bottom.

"What's wrong, Pharaoh?"

"I'm just very, very tired."

Yugi could sense it. Yami's substance seemed to be less so. But it didn't explain why Yami was like this.

"Then you should rest!"

"I shall." Stubbornly he rose again, one arm braced against his stomach. He shambled forward two steps, then paused as his balance tottered.

"Yami, stop, you're hurting yourself!" More blood: its source still unknown, was now left in every footprint Yami left as if he had just stepped in visceral remains.

Clearly he was in no condition to be wandering around when he should've been resting in order to recover.

Yami's legs caved in and he sat on the stone floor, hugging himself as though there was a pain deep inside him. Yugi wasn't sure if the Pharaoh had stopped because he had ordered him to do so, or if in fact Yami couldn't budge another step.

"Don't you have anywhere to rest apart from the super hard floor? Like a bed to lie on?" Yugi asked in concern.

Yami snapped his bony fingers in the air and a stone bed materialized right in front of them in the middle of the stone chamber, however, the effort seemed to have cost him further. Blood lined his lips.

And it wasn't exactly Yugi's first choice for a bed. It was just pure stone with no bedding whatsoever. If this was Yami's idea of comfort, than he was mad.

"You're hurt!" Yugi said, feeling prostrated and frantic. "Where? Show me where?"

"Spare me your concern, Yugi." His expression showed little else but discomfort behind his schooled demeanour. "I am fine, but you shouldn't have seen me like this."

Yugi ignored his characterized stubbornness. "Let me see!"

"No, I am fine."

"Let me see!"

Yami grunted at the back of his throat. But his arms dropped at his sides. He didn't stand back up to move away, and Yugi saw this as submission. Funny really. A powerful pharaoh of the dark was now the compliant protector of Yugi who did all he said. Even if he was being difficult about it right now.

Yugi sensed pain pacing through Yami's torso. Now that he was close enough, he could almost feel the pain running through his own soul.

He opened up Yami's cobalt jacket on each side but saw nothing amiss. Then he turned his eye to the black shirt. Yami pouted and looked away, clearly angry.

Yugi didn't care for his emotional charade. He just wanted to know what was wrong.

He picked the bottom of the back tank top with his fingers and hoisted it up.

There was nothing there that resembled damage. Just a slim, gaunt chest.

Yugi pulled the top back down, his mind on overdrive.

Yami was looking at the floor distractedly, a trickle of blood easing from the corner of his lips. As if ashamed of it, he wiped it off with the back of his wrist, leaving a red smear across his chin.

Yugi went round to the Pharaoh's back and did the same thing by grabbing the jacket and top, lifting it. His determination to find out what was wrong was rewarded.

A thin wound marked Yami's back next to his spine. It directly lined up with his heart.

The slit looked deep. It was two inches long and one centimetre across give or take. If Yugi's memory served him correctly, it was exactly the same place the Court Joker had stabbed him during a duel. It kinda didn't make sense. The monsters were all projectors weren't they? Holograms? Why then was Yami wearing the mark as if he had really been stabbed?

"Anubis required my life energy. This is where he received it." Yami whispered as if sensing Yugi's distress. "We were duelling in his shadow realm when Kaiba played the Pyramid of Light card. Light is a direct opposite to my sustenance. I am open to it, as I am sure you know."

Yugi wondered if the Pharaoh was referring to Yugi's own light.

"But the duel is over! How can this still be here?"

"Don't you know, little one? I retain all damage unto myself to protect your body, whether we are in the shadow realm or not. I will heal, given time. But this is the closest I have been to death."

"But spirits can't die!"

Yami turned to him, pulling down his clothes as he did as if he found any nakedness to be an indignity. "Yes, they can. How else did we defeat the evil spirit that resided inside Malik's body for instance? Yes. We can die."

It gave Yugi a moment to think. Anubis had sucked up a ton of life from Yami. And Yami had collapsed during the duel with Kaiba – hadn't he? Yugi had at least felt it... felt something terrible happening to his counterpart.

"Now do you see?" Yami admonished gently.

"Why didn't you tell me you'd been hurt so bad?"

"Ah," Yami closed his eyes, "you had enough to worry about, little one. Besides, it had been a victory, had it not?"

"Not if you expire on me!"

Yami laughed softly before opening his eyes again. "You underestimate me."

"Oh really? Well, you're coming with me."

Yami turned to him, his calmness vanishing. "Where to?"

"Well, to my soul room of course!"

"Your soul room?"

"Yes. You're sleeping in there with me. I am not having you sleep it off on a stone floor or a stone bed. And I know you: you'd be up again, wandering around your rooms without fully resting. Now get up."

Yami frowned, knowing how serious Yugi was. Then he relaxed, seeing that he wasn't going to win this battle. "As you wish, Yugi."

His legs trembled, and he did manage to rise erect. Yet he still hobbled forwards as if he had a large thorn growing inside his stomach. And when Yugi slid an arm through his and started guiding him back, the blood began to reoccur behind them in splodges.

But spirits can't die!

Yes. We can die.

It would seem that Yami had been wandering his maze without resting because he had been hurting too much. There was a possibility that he would have kept going until he would literally drop down dead.

Though it took longer than Yugi would have liked, they made it to Yami's door: the exit. Yami was barely holding himself up, but he bravely and stubbornly did not complain. He only whimpered now and then during the short journey.

Yugi opened the door and coaxed him through it and out into the corridor separating their rooms. The door clanged shut loudly behind them, leaving a mist of dust.

Yugi's door was always open, and warm, soft light entered the corridor. Yugi guided him inwards. And as he glanced over his shoulder, he could still see marks of blood trailing along.

Yami sagged when he was inside as if the warmth had melted his resilience and he all but wanted to collapse. Yugi guided him on over to a bed that was half covered in toys and fluffy cushions. Yugi pushed them off and pulled back the covers. "Here. You can lie down now!"

Yami looked at the proffered bed with anxiety. Yugi could feel guilt rising in the Pharaoh's thoughts. Guilt, and a sense of not belonging here.

Yugi wanted to cry at these sad feelings, but instead he reinforced thoughts of warmth and love in the hopes that Yami would pick up on them.

Gently he eased him down onto the bed. Yami reclined back, and allowed Yugi to pull the covers up to his blood-smeared chin.

"Rest, okay?" Yugi demanded.

Yami looked up at him ruefully. "I shall, but only as long as necessary. Anubis was but one danger, Yugi, and I fear more enemies on the way. It is unfortunate that I have fallen so, but..."

Yugi put one finger to his lips to quieten him, and with the other hand he rested it on his chest. He sent in all the warmth and healing he could: enough to comfort Yami's distressed core. The pharaoh went to resist: he was not used to such invasion. But then the calmness stilled him, and he settled to sleep – his eyes closing.

Yugi stepped back, tired also.

At least Yami would sleep now. The stink of blood was potent and foul smelling in his room of light and safety, but he did not care for it. He only wanted Yami on the mend. It was tragic to think that his own soul room would urge him forever onward – through the labyrinth as if he was some automaton.

Perhaps rest did not come easy for the Pharaoh?

"You are so stubborn." Yugi whispered to his sleeping dark half.

The End.