A/N: My muse decided to change the story half-way through. I really wish it had made up its mind beforehand, but apart from that I think I like this world. Hopefully I'll tinker around with it more later on.

Writen for the Yugioh Fanfiction Contest Season 11, Round 5. Pairing was Thornshipping: Anzu/Yami Malik.

Enjoy. :D

Frame of Mind

It was a tearful tune that sung upon the frames of this mind, though its appearance had led him to expect something more joyous instead. A Christmas Carol perhaps, even if neither of them believed in its cause. But somehow that wordless song dimmed the lights of a ready-made stage – in a way he had not expected, because on the outside she had been smiling and strong.

Here, she was the graceful let melancholic dancer in a dark and empty stage.

It eased him, somewhat; it made her more accessible, less like an angel on a mountain-peak who silently observed the world and more like the earthy woman who would take his hand and help. He had come, seeking that very hand: that earthy hand, instead of something indescribably beautiful but unreachable –

And then the music stopped. Too suddenly. Too soon.

'Please…' He held up his hands in peace. 'Don't be afraid. I –'

For a moment, nothing breathed within the silent walls, and then she was before him, supporting him as his knees gave up their struggle.

'You're wounded.' Her voice was soft, yet in the echo of that song it was sharp like a whistle blown.

'No, I'm just – 'His own words sounded like chalk on a blackboard, and he shoved them out in the hopes that the song might start up again. 'I'm just weak.'

She let go of him and he straightened from the lack of support. 'I don't think you're weak,'she said with a touch of firmness in her tone. 'Stubborn maybe; did you need some help?'

He nodded, unable to say anything else.

She regarded him. 'Maybe not stubborn,' she corrected herself. 'Lonely?'

He said nothing; she took his silence as an affirmative.

'How can I help?'

He pointed, his hand shaking a little and she was supporting him again, turning him around. 'That way,' he said. 'My…brother… I need to get to him.' Through the dream, to the doorway to life on the other side…

'Your brother?' she repeated, walking slowly, counting the steps in her head. One, two, on, two.

'Not by blood, but by everything else –'

That reminded her of Yugi, and she smiled a little.

'He's – he's –' His voice shook again, and he gritted his teeth. 'He'll kill him.'

The walls dimmed a little – or maybe they came closer; he couldn't really tell. And he didn't think she noticed them.

'Who?'

'Him.' She should have known, but when she showed no sign of understanding, he forced himself to elaborate. 'My other half; the one who destroys the light.'

She stopped walking; he looked at her. She lifted her chin and looked back, then began walking again. Without him, but at that slow and easy pace he could, even in his current state, match.

'You don't look like him,' she said, after the silence screamed a bit. 'Or act like him.'

He gave a wry and tired smile he couldn't see. 'That's because I'm pathetic.' Then the implication of her words hit him. 'You mean you've –'

She cut him off. 'Do I look like a broken doll to you?'

'You looked like a beautiful angel on a mountain's peak at the start,' he confessed. 'But now, you look…human.'

'Yes,' she agreed. 'Human. And is that so wrong?'

They came upon the hole in the wall, and the girl touched it tenderly. 'If this wasn't here,' she said, 'how would you help your brother?'

He stood in the shadow of her back and watched her.

'You see,' she continued. 'He made this hole.' She winced as a little light poured through it, briefly blinding them both. 'And I'm glad he did. Yes, he ripped down my beautiful world. Yes, he drove out that foolish happy song that had always been sung, but this is now a place worth leaving and coming back to. He woke me up.'

And yet my brother sleeps like death because of him, the other thought.

'I would like to think he cared for me.' She looked into the hole – which, now that it had let go of the light it held, was nothing save an endless expanse of black. 'Cared – differently to how friends, who never want to see another friend in pain. Cared enough so that they can hurt the ones they love – but even that is a fantasy, isn't it?' She smiled bitterly. 'When I'm a dancer – a professional one – I'll hope one of those anonymous fan letters will be from him.'

He didn't know what to say, or think. The burden of his other half was a heavy one to bear, but the girl wove a different tale for him. A girl who was strong and defined even in a bleached background of white and who he had thought, when he first laid eyes on her, to be untouchable. And yet she had been touched: her song pulled at his heart in its sad symphony, but as he passed through the hole and left her behind he heard something else in there as well.

Something that did seem like the Christmas Carol image he had first seen in her dream.

And he opened his eyes in her hospital room – in her body, tall and slender and yet with more muscle than many a girl her age had, and he faced the eyes of his other self in his own body.

Those lips frowned at him, showing their displeasure. 'You're weak,' he said.

'I know.' It was her voice that spoke, but not her words, nor the conviction that lay beneath them.

The darker half shrugged, and turned away. 'You're a lost cause,' he sighed. 'I hope at least you enjoyed her dancing.' Like I.

He pressed a button on the side of the bed departed. The other made to follow his body and other half, but the nurses spilled in to guide the still recovering body back to bed.