Amalgamation

I

They were eleven when everything got lost in the fire. His parents were trapped in their bedroom between their barred windows and the fire itself. Her field reporter father suffocated from the smoke inhalation as he reported on the disaster.

The fire went on for several blocks, ravaging the modest, Mediterranean-style homes that lined their winding roads. Serena ran towards the fire to find him, just as Yuri was running from it towards her, and they caught each other in a moment of supreme relief. They then fled to the docks, tiny and lost in a sea of ashen faces. They tried calling for their parents to see if they were there, but their voices were soundly drowned out by the panicked commotion around them.

There was an old adage that stated, no parent should outlive their children. This was true, but Serena still wished she could exchange her life for her father's. She would gladly give anything to hug that wonderful, silly man just one last time. Her mother was long dead; he had filled both roles. With his death, she was set adrift, alone in the world save for one person.

She found Yuri sitting at the edge of the docks after he received word on his own family. The way he stared into the water frightened her, so she walked over and sat down next to him. She clasped her hand on his shoulder and dipped her head so that it was an inch away from his. "It's you and me, forever," she quietly vowed. "As long as you need me, I will never die."

At those words, he turned his head up and stared blankly into the horizon. She lowered her hand from his shoulder so she could link arms with him; she was prepared for the inevitable drowning attempt. Either we live together, or I get to see father again. No in-betweens!

"You promise?"

He sounded blasé as ever, perhaps a bit much so. She pushed all thoughts of her father aside, because just as he rose from the grief of his wife's passing in order to raise her, she also had to rise from her grief. "I promise, we will always be together."

"But life is unpredictable, and terribly strange. What if we get separated?"

"Then I'll grab hold of fate with my own two hands, and surpass it! No matter where you go, I will definitely find you. Definitely!"

"Oh, Serena," he sighed, resting his head on her shoulder. She couldn't see his face, but she could hear the impish grin in his voice. He hooked his pinky around her bracelet. "This is why you're my favorite."

She was glad her blush had disappeared by the time the social workers came to retrieve them.

II

They were sent to the only orphanage in their small, pastoral town. It was as clean as could be, the Headmistress making sure of that in the way she delegated chores. Many hands made for light work. Ambiance was not the problem.

The teachers and caretakers were also kind, and fair with their beatings. No harder or any more frequent than her father, the one person who acted as the standard by which she judged all other adults. With him in mind, their belief in corporal punishment seemed entirely appropriate; she never thought to question it.

The food was edible. Nothing compared to the culinary gold her father was capable of, but it wasn't terrible and sat well enough with her. They received three meals a day, which was more than what she expected. In all, she found it to be acceptable.

The only universal point of contention was that there was the prohibition against dueling, but she and Yuri soon discovered that everyone did it anyway. Its pervasiveness was an open secret, one of the few rules that no one cared to truly enforce. So long as no one got too showy, the Headmistress left well enough alone.

Nighttime. That was the big problem.

Every night was the same in that Serena couldn't sleep through it. Her dreams were plagued by the sounds of screaming children, plumes of smoke, bodies hitting the ground, the smell of cooked flesh. Late spring was when her life was razed to the ground, so in those first few months she would wake up in the dead summer heat and think it was still happening. She would scream, jump out of bed, even sprint a few steps towards the door; but then reality would take hold again, and she would remember that that night was long past her.

All the commotion would wake up the other five girls she shared a room with. They tolerated her night terrors and flashbacks for a time—she was hardly the first among them to be plagued in such a way—but their patience was depilated after three solid months of broken sleep. The oldest among them took it upon herself to bring Serena's "issue" to the attention of one of their caretakers. When no immediate action was taken, the girls decided to take matters into their own hands by locking Serena out of their bedroom after lights out.

She slept at the foot of her bedroom door that night, but her nightmares hit her all the same—only this time, instead of being confined to one room, her screaming echoed on and on throughout the entire girl's sleeping quarters.

"You have nightmares every night? Since we got here?"

Yuri asked her this the next day during their fifteen-minute lunch break. Completely ignoring his half-eaten sandwich—and thus, risking the punishment he would receive for wasting food—he'd turned completely towards her, wrapping his hands around hers and bringing them to rest in his lap. As always, he was cool to the touch, a welcome relief from the stale heat that permeated the air. Still, she burned with shame. She was supposed to be stronger and braver than this.

She knew Yuri couldn't comprehend why she simply couldn't move past that night, as he had. Things like homework and chores and the death of one's parents seemed inconsequential to him, easily ignored as he floated above and beyond reality. And she could do nothing more than watch him soar through the sky as she remained tethered to the scorched earth below, unable to get past, unable to move on.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he continued, his voice growing soft. "I could have helped you."

Serena wanted to ask how, but she refrained. (Anything to prove she still had some semblance of self-control.) She turned away from him. He seemed more shaken by the thought of her hiding something from him than he was by the news of his parent's demise. It compounded her shame, but he seemed to sense that, too.

"It's okay." He paused for a moment, before firmly squeezing her hands. "It's okay," he repeated in a more definitive tone.

The bell rang. Serena pulled her hands away, quickly gathered her things and scurrying off before Yuri could see her shameful tears. She couldn't bear the thought of her brave and strong friend seeing her in such a weak state, and thus knowing for sure that she wasn't cut from the same cloth. What if his opinion of her dropped? What if he didn't want to be friends anymore?

That night, their caretakers made sure that Serena wasn't locked out again by escorting her to her bedroom personally. The other girls shot withering glares at her, and the biggest among them warned Serena that if she made them lose one more night of sleep, they would put an end to things by shoving her out of their bedroom window once and for all. On that awful night, plenty of people survived the fire by jumping out of two, even three story windows, but they were all stationed on the sixth floor. Serena resolved that she simply could not afford to fall asleep

She tried her best. That night she lay on her side facing the window, with her knees drawn up to her chest. She stared up at the full moon. Counted stars, lost track of stars. Willed the hands of time to go in reverse.

Three hours in, amongst the snores of the other girls, she heard the door behind her open and then softly close again. She thought nothing of it, assuming one of her roommates had gotten up to use the bathroom.

"Serena?" She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Are you awake?"

She jumped, startled, but didn't scream as she might have. She recognized that voice, the background music to every happy memory she had. She turned to face him. "What are you—"

"Shh," Yuri cooed, a gentle smiled stretching across his face as he climbed into bed with her. "I'm here to keep you company."

"But you're not allowed to be here. You might get in trouble."

"So?" He rolled his eyes. "What can they do to me? Hit me? Take my mom and dad away?"

"They could hurt Sora," she reasoned, referring to the friendless runt of an orphan who had taken to following Yuri around.

The look he gave her told her he didn't see anything wrong with that, as though such a punishment would be akin to banning him from toilet cleaning duty. "Maybe then he'll stop crying so much."

"But isn't he your student?"

He waved her off. "That's just what he thinks. I couldn't care less about him."

"Well," Serena tried to think of something he might care about. "They could hurt me. They could make sure we can't see each other anymore."

Yuri seemed to consider this for a moment, before shaking his head. "Don't worry, I'll just leave before everyone wakes up."

"But—"

"Serena," he raised any eyebrow, and smiled the way he always did when he was about to break some rule presented to him. "When do I ever get caught?"

She huffed, insulted that he would lie so blatantly to her face. "You get caught all the time!"

Without breaking eye contact, he brought up his hand and then lowered it, slowly—a reminder that she ought to keep her voice down. He then cupped her cheek with that same hand. "I won't get caught this time. I promise."

She almost rolled her eyes. "Why are you even here?"

"To help you sleep. Come, lay down." Yuri put his hand on her shoulder and applied some pressure—certainly light enough to resist if she truly didn't want to. Still complied, turning to her side and away from him. Serena felt her bed shift as he laid down himself, on his side, also facing the window. He wrapped his arms around her midsection and curled himself around her.

It was the middle of summer, the heat wave so thick and pervasive that even the total absence of the sun offered little relief. There were no indoor fans; there was no gentle breeze coming in through the open window. Everyone, from the esteemed Headmistress all the way down to the lowest orphan, could do nothing but languish in the unending heat, and pray for dreams of winter. Such extreme weather almost never boded well with prolonged body contact—but Yuri was cold. With his every exhale, she felt his breath on her ear—a gentle breeze. "Don't worry about anything. Just go to sleep."

"Can't," Serena murmured though a yawn. "They'll throw me out the window if I scream again."

"Somehow I doubt that," he laughed softly. "But even if they do, I'll just jump out after you. We can fly away together." He nestled up against her and tightened his grip around her midsection. Serena couldn't tell if he wanted to consume her, or if he wanted to fade into her. She could hear the smile in his voice as he added, "They'd would be doing us a favor…"

Serena tensed up. She knew what he meant, and it made her wonder if Yuri really was so above-it-all. A moment later, he loosened his grip on her. His face less than an inch away from hers, he whispered: "There's a place for us, far away from here. A place where the trees grow tall, and the moon is always full, and kittens play in flowerbeds. A place just for you and me. The journey there won't be as scary as you think." He pointed at the window, beyond the confines of the orphanage and their town and reality itself. "With just one leap, this can all go away."

The way he spoke made her nervous, but not for her own sake. She was sure that Yuri would never hurt her; it was an indisputable fact, on par with the color of the vast sky or the depth of the ocean blue. That didn't mean, however, Yuri would never hurt anyone. And she wondered then, would he hurt himself? She remembered him sitting at harbor's edge, sporting that hauntingly blank stare, and how she imagined him slipping down out of his seat and into the ocean below. Something made him refrain; something inspired him to continue on day in and day out. She simply wasn't sure what that was.

That night, Serena had a dream of a different kind. She dreamt of a place where the trees grew tall, with thick branches reaching up to embrace the full moon above. And that moon, it was bigger and brighter than she had ever seen it before; so close, she could almost touch it herself.

She saw Yuri, but he hadn't noticed her yet. He caught sight of a kitten a few feet away, and started towards it. Oleanders and azaleas bloomed with his every step, and the kitten, intrigued, began to wander over to him.

It was then that he began to float up into the sky. Serena ran toward him, determined to either keep him on the ground or fly up to the moon with him. She ran as fast as she could, but fell short by a few inches. And she could only watch helplessly as he drifted further and further away from her.

Suddenly she felt a tug on her body, and his ascent halted. She couldn't see it, but there was a tie between them—strong enough to transcended every mode of their existence, yet flimsy enough to break at too sharp of a tug. If not for that tenuous bond, he would simply float away.

That morning, she woke up not from some nightmare, but from the Headmistress pounding her fist against the door, their very own alarm clock. Yuri, staying true to his word, was no longer in the room—but his delicate scent remained, clinging to her pillow. Her throat was tight. Her chest felt heavy and full. And she could do nothing more than blink blearily against the sunlight streaming in through her window, unable to shake off the unbelievable calm that tends to accompany the end of a prolonged crying session.

III

The schoolyard politics that governed the orphanage dictated that everyone stick to their own clique. What determined one's group and status depended on a number of interplaying factors. Things like age, race, gender, town of origin, and connection to the outside world were all very important, but the one thing most heavily considered was dueling skill.

They would someday grow up to be fearsome and formidable duelists, but Serena and Yuri had just begun to develop their dueling skills when they first arrived. Sora had yet to even begin truly building his deck, basing his card choices entirely on how cute the monsters were. And so, they were regulated to a rather low status within the orphanage: not as low as some of the older children who still displayed poor dueling skills, but still not high enough for anyone to consider a possible alliance with. Serena could have potentially garnered protection by way of the older boys, who regarded her as weak not only for her age but for her gender as well. They thought she was cute and expected to make a little sister out of her. Serena would have none of it, kicking them in the shins and insulting their dead mothers whenever they approached her or tried to jump to her defense.

Yuri was impressed by Serena's fortitude, always had been. He was sure that Sora would have jumped at the chance to have someone else fight his battles, weakling that he was. Because Sora followed him like a shadow, they were considered allied by default. Though they shared no blood and he never once came to the younger boy's defense, everyone else in the orphanage saw them as inexorably linked. They would be considered a packaged deal in any potential alliance. It annoyed him to no end that he was being wordlessly pushed into acting in concert with his 'student', while the older boys seemed determined to take Serena way from him.

No matter how many times she rebuffed their "brotherly "advances, none of them seemed to take the hint that she wanted nothing to do with them. After one incident that involved them cornering Serena in a seldom used hallway, Yuri challenged the lot of them—six in all—to a duel. Serena joined him, as did Sora. Bravery aside, they were greatly outclassed, and their loss was a humiliating blow that reflected badly on how well they could defend themselves.

The reputation and status of their little group dropped to an even lower point than it already had been. The older boys became more relentless with Serena, arguing that she should let go of old "outside" friendships and ally herself with the strong. Some of the older girls began to actively push Sora around for no other reason than to prove that they could. At all of nine years old, he had no money they could mug off of him; so they instead turned to random acts of aggression, such as making him lick toilet seats, or locking him in the janitor's closet where he would have to sit in abject silence for the entire day.

The older children soon learned that nothing they could do to Yuri would truly bother him. He ate the live bugs they "force fed" him with vigor, savoring each bite. When they pulled his pants down in the middle of recess, he simply stood there expectantly, the laughter died down into awkward silence soon after. One day, some of the boys who'd been after Serena held him down and forced him into dress—but all he did was run as fast as he could to where Serena was, to show off his new outfit and tell her how pretty and free he felt. Some of them gave up, and others turned to out and out violence, only to have Yuri escape them every time. They soon realized that everything they'd forced upon him only came to pass because he allowed it to happen—and with that, he was mostly left alone.

And so, as if to compensate, they stepped up their needling of Serena and Sora. And this was perhaps the only thing that truly did bother him. After one particularly alarming event in which Serena was picked up off the ground, her protests ignored, and almost carried her off to the boys sleeping quarters, Yuri decided it was time to take action.

It was a simple plan: take the janitor's drain cleaner and mix it into a shampoo or liquid soap bottle in the boy's washroom. The prolonged exposure on open skin would, at the very least, leave a terrible rash; best-case scenario saw the drain cleaner getting into their eyes, which would cause either sudden or eventual blindness. Whatever the outcome, Yuri hoped it would be gradual. He wanted it to be slow, wanted to give Serena the gift of getting to watch her tormentors suffer.

The perpetrators were around fourteen years old, meaning their group would be allowed to shower at 7:00 pm. At first, he considered committing the act on a day where he was scheduled to clean the boys' washroom—he would have easy access to the showers, and could commit the deed there. But after some consideration, he realized that the circumstances and his well-known motive would quickly implicate him. Being caught would surely result in his expulsion, which naturally meant that he would be separated from Serena—something that absolutely could not happen.

So two days later, he placed a tainted bottle of shampoo into Sora's hands.

"Here. Put this in the boy's showers at 7:00. Do your best to make sure it's our enemies who use it."

Sora turned the bottle over in his hands. "Do I want to know why?"

Yuri smirked. Sometimes, his 'student' was smarter than he gave him credit for. He leaned forward until his face was an inch away from Sora's. "Everyone gets what they deserve," he whispered. "That's all you need to know."

At 7:15, there was screaming.

Yuri had been on mop duty, sopping up semi-dried vomit off the cafeteria floor. Calmly, he propped it up against the wall and turned to the stairway that lead to the boy's quarters.

The screams only grew louder and more intense as he ascended, pockmarked by the stomping of people running towards the scene. He eventually began to make out some words, a mantra of sorts. I can't see, I can't see, I can't—!

Yuri began to climb the stairs two at a time. He knew those voices. His plan had been a success, every ounce of his vitriol expressed in the best possible way. He could only imagine how happy Serena would be.

He shoved his way past the crowd that had gathered around the scene. Three boys were on the floor, writhing; one was at the bathroom sink, cupping water into his hands and vigorously washing out his eyes. Yuri hid his smile behind his hand, fighting the urge to ask them, it hurts, right? Is this is the worst pain you've ever been in? Can you describe it to me?

"I'm sorry."

It was Sora who whispered the apology, his back pressed against the wall, clutching the toothbrush he'd been using to scrub the toilets to his chest. His round face had lost all it's color, his wide eyes reflecting the scene before him. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry…"

Shut up, Yuri silently begged his 'student.' Shut up. Shut up! ShutupshutupSHUTUP-!

The Headmistress pushed her way through the crowd, followed by several caregivers. The boys were taken away, presumably to receive medical treatment. This would have upset Yuri—he so did want to see them writhe—but he was more concerned with Sora being dragged away by the Headmistress. He continued to apologize under his breath, eyes wide and unseeing.

Yuri suddenly felt sick. He's going to tell. He's going to tell them everything, and it'll all be over.

By this point, her nightmares had ceased to be a problem. But he still snuck into her room every night, worried that the night he decided to stay in his room would be the night Serena woke up screaming again. He was sure her roommates knew about him, and probably only tolerated his presence because of his magical ability to halt Serena's disruptive nightmares. So long as they spoke in whispers and he was gone before daylight, the other girls left well enough alone.

That night, they discussed the incident. "I can't believe Sora," Serena lamented, poking at some exposed mattress stuffing. "I didn't know he could something so… evil."

Yuri didn't know what to say to that. How could anything inspired by love be evil? He shuddered to think of how her opinion of him would change once the truth came out. "When are we going to leave this place, Serena?"

She remained quiet, her gentle prodding of the mattress stuffing gradually becoming more aggressive, until she was finally tearing at it. "Why?"

"This place isn't worth our time. We deserve to be somewhere beautiful."

"I don't want beauty. I want to live."

Yuri buried his face in her hair. "… what would you do if I wasn't here anymore?"

He mumbled the question under his breath, so quiet that he was sure she couldn't have heard. But Serena still detached herself from his grip, and turned to face him. Her eyes were wide like Sora's were. "What do you mean?"

"I mean… if I left here. To go live out there," he pointed to the window. "Outside."

Serena sat up, her back to Yuri. Her shoulders were snapped back, and in that posture Yuri saw a gallant figure, strong and capable and ready to endure the horrors of everyday living. She was a pillar, a tree with roots tangled deeply into the earth. He so wished he could be like her. "I made a promise to you Yuri, one I intend to keep. Wherever you go, I will find you, and bring you back where you belong."

"'Back where I belong'? And where's that?"

She turned to look at him, her eyes narrow, her brow furrowed. "Wherever I am."

He couldn't tell her what he'd done. When the truth came out he would deny it, everyday, for as long as he lived. He knew—just knew—that she wouldn't want to be friends anymore if she knew the truth. And if that happened, his life would truly be over.

The next morning, the caretakers announced Sora's expulsion for his responsibility for the blinding four people.

The police had not been involved. The children were plainly told that leaving Sora to the mercy of the elements was a far more appropriate response.

Yuri considered this. It was summer: uncomfortable, but mostly survivable. He could even survive on crops growing in unsupervised fields, assuming he didn't accidentally poison himself. But winter was an entirely different matter. In effect, the Headmistress had bypassed the law for the satisfaction of giving Sora his death sentence, personally.

Next to him, Serena spoke up. "Was there anyone else involved?"

"The boy confessed to his crime in full. We have no reason to believe that anyone else was involved."

Yuri nearly laughed out loud, but instead squeezed Serena's hand. When she turned to him and saw his smile, she roughly jerked her hand away.