"Hey, hey, Kaito~"
Kaito ignores Ryouga's voice and keeps walking. His vision is blurry, he can barely feel his feet, but he has to go on.
From the corner of his eye, Kaito can see Ryouga pouting. "Aren't you rude, ignoring me like that?"
It's nothing like Ryouga.
Kaito feels the familiar arms around his shoulders, and he wants to lean in to the touch, but he mustn't, he can't. "Get lost."
He narrows his eyes and tries to spot any Academia jackets.
Real jackets, anyway, since he's been seeing an approaching army for an hour now, an army that's not even real.
"Hey, why don't you just give up?" Ryouga's hands are uncomfortably close to Kaito's neck, not close enough to press down and end his life, but enough for Kaito to feel like he can't breathe.
He's not real.
Kaito accelerates his steps, just to trip and fall face first to the ground. If he's bleeding, he doesn't notice it.
"Haruto is dead," Ryouga reminds him cheerfully, smiling with all of his teeth visible. "So is your father, but you wanted to get rid of him anyway, since he's just baggage. So isn't that a good thing?"
"Shut up," Kaito hisses as he pushes himself up and changes his direction.
This isn't Ryouga. This a hallucination. Or a dream. Snap out of it.
Kaito pinches his own arm, but Ryouga doesn't disappear and Kaito doesn't wake up.
It's been like this for a while now. When have I last slept?
He doesn't remember. He thinks it must've been at least two days, but for all he knows, it might already be three.
Finally, he moves around the corner to head for Heartland Tower—
There's soldiers waiting there, too.
One of the soldiers has Haruto's face and an Academia duel disk. "Hey, nii-san! Wanna duel?"
Kaito runs.
He runs until he finds a house that's already open, shoves a chair below the door handle and runs all the way down to the basement.
No one follows him, because no one is real.
Kaito collapses against the wall.
Then Ryouga pops up in front of him again, sitting down in his lap like it's the most normal thing in the world. "You want to forget, don't you?"
Ryouga's smile is gentle right now, but Kaito can't trust it. "Don't."
(Kaito is too weak to fight what's about to come, though.)
When their lips touch, Kaito almost feels it, but it's different because the real Ryouga's kisses carry emotion.
This kiss is just empty, but not empty enough to not fill at least a bit of the void inside Kaito.
Ryouga breaks the kiss and his fingers trail Kaito's collarbone. "You're the leader of the Resistance now. Isn't that great?"
Kaito feels like he can't move, like he's frozen, but maybe it's just the fatigue taking over his body.
Ryouga's lips move to Kaito's ear, almost touching it, and he whispers, "Chris would be proud, wouldn't he?"
Kaito wants to push Ryouga away, but Ryouga holds him down effortlessly, and Kaito is lying on his back now.
"You're not real," he says— he thinks he says it, but he doesn't even need to speak, because Ryouga knows what he's thinking. "The real Ryouga can't win against me in a physical battle."
Somewhere in the corner of his mind, Kaito registers that there are screams outside, but Ryouga's voice drowns them out immediately.
"I'm not real, no," Ryouga smirks and it almost looks like an expression the real Ryouga would make. "But self-loathing is more effective when it's coming from someone you care about."
"Then why is it you who's haunting me?" Kaito knows that the more he speaks to the hallucinations, the more he gets drawn into it, but his vision is blurry and at least the hallucinations are not. "Why isn't it—"
"Haruto? Because," Ryouga leans over Kaito, the tips of their noses touching. "You actually tried to save Haruto. Not like when you ran away right before the building collapsed on top of me and—"
"I couldn't have done anything!" Kaito yells, and Ryouga's smirk twists into a scowl.
"If all you're gonna do is whine, you should've died alongside me." Ryouga laughs.
Kaito's ears hurt.
I can't listen to him. If I listen now, I'll—
"But you couldn't do that, right? Because you wanted to live." Ryouga's fingers are around his neck again, and Kaito feels like not struggling at all, but—
"You know this won't kill you."
The screams have died down.
"Oh, look, another one of your comrades died~" Ryouga chuckles. "You really are a failure. The Resistance was meant to protect Heartland, you know? But probably—"
"But probably I just want revenge, yeah, you said that already." Kaito is tired. He can't stand it anymore. Maybe Ryouga is right.
(Maybe my subconscious is right, Kaito corrects himself, because Ryouga doesn't talk like this.)
Maybe Kaito is that awful of a person.
Maybe Kaito is a failure.
"Admit it," Ryouga hisses. "Admit that I'm right."
Kaito swallows and nods. "...I seek revenge. More than anything else. I won't forgive them. I won't be deceived." He gets into a sitting position again.
"Good boy," Ryouga praises and runs his fingers through Kaito's hair. "You wouldn't wanna end like Yuuma, right? Believing the enemy, just to be turned into a card."
Kaito remains silent, trying to focus on Ryouga's hands instead.
"Quite the pathetic one, aren't you? Using me for something like this." Ryouga keeps running his fingers through Kaito's hair though, so Kaito can endure whatever hurtful things he's saying.
(His heart isn't breaking.)
Kaito nods, but he's not sure if he really understood what Ryouga said. "Will you go now?"
Ryouga snuggles up to Kaito now. "I think they're gone now. So yeah, I'll go. I'll be back if you falter again."
This time, the kiss feels a lot more real, and Kaito feels like losing himself in it and never going back outside, but—
Ryouga breaks the kiss. "Don't be greedy. You can't be weak here, bastard. 'Night."
At least that was a lot more like him.
Kaito's vision fades to black.