Yu-Gi-Oh! (c) Kazuki Takahashi

This story also suffered a brutal rewrite. This is another one of my best. I hope that you enjoy it as well!


Atem sat gently on Yugi's bed, careful not to disturb his partner's sleep on his birthday. It was June 4th, and Yugi was sixteen years old. Atem brushed the bangs out of Yugi's face and smiled. Yugi was the same, but so much else was different.

Yugi had gracefully (and occasionally, not so gracefully) adapted to everything that Atem had put him through. First Yugi had solved the puzzle and dealt with the blackouts and memory loss. Then, in Duelist Kingdom, he had confronted Atem during his duel with Kaiba and rejected him, worried that the spirit would hurt more of his friends. Neither of them had known Atem existed until that moment.

When they beat Pegasus, Yugi and Atem spoke personally. Yugi had called Atem "Yami," darkness. Atem lived in darkness, and everything Atem remembered was darkness. Some of that darkness had crept into Atem's soul in the millennia, and after beating Noah and then Marik at Battle City, Yugi got to see a little more of that darkness.

Atem played the Seal of Orichalcos and broke the bond between them. He harbored guilt about that incident long after it was finished. Yugi forgave him again and again, but Atem never accepted his mercy. He remembered a conversation that he and Yugi had had when they were driving to Atem's tomb in Egypt:

"Pharaoh?" Yugi asked mentally. Yami shifted his attention off the matters on his own mind and focused on Yugi.

"What is it, Yugi?" Yami asked. Was Yugi worried about being separated from Yami again? Or was he afraid of what Yami would remember about his past? Yami had realized that there was something evil inside of him ever since he had played the Seal of Orichalcos, something dark that Yugi's kindness could not purge out of him. If that evil had been present in his reign as pharaoh, he could not have been a good king.

"You were a good king, I know you were," Yugi stated, reading Yami's thoughts as he always did. "Everybody has a little darkness inside of them. That doesn't mean you were evil."

"You, Yugi, have no darkness," Yami stated.

Then Yami sensed something strange in Yugi's thoughts, something half-formed and malignant. Yugi was trying to hide one of his thoughts. "That's not true," Yugi said quietly, and he disappeared into the recesses of his mind.

That was the day that Atem forgave himself for the Seal. It was that day, when he realized that even his innocent little Yugi had something to hide, something to be ashamed of. Atem never knew what it was and never asked. But there were times, like now, when he wondered what could have made Yugi so uncomfortable.

Yugi stirred and opened one of his eyes. It drifted sleepily for a moment until it landed on Atem. "Mornin'," Yugi mumbled half into his pillow.

"Good morning," Atem greeted. "Happy birthday, Yugi."

Atem expected Yugi to smile, get up, perhaps try and wheedle some birthday coffee out of Grandpa. But instead, Yugi's one visible eye grew dull and sad. He turned his face into his pillow, pulled the covers over his head, and then fussed around beneath the sheets for a few moments. Then he lay still, no movement, no words.

Atem peered at him in confusion. "Yugi, it's your birthday. I thought you would be happy," Atem said. "What's wrong? Another year and no taller?"

"No!" Yugi retorted with a touch of annoyance. "I'm fine, I just want to go back to sleep." There were tears in his words. Atem was concerned.

"Yugi?" he asked. He pulled the covers off Yugi's head to look at his face. His eyes were dry, but his expression was dejected. Atem went to stroke Yugi's cheek to see if tears had hastily been brushed away. "Yugi, what is it, what's wrong?"

Atem touched him and Yugi flinched. "Please don't touch me," he said softly. He turned over in bed and pulled his covers back over his head. Atem backed out of the room. What could have been making his partner act this way on his birthday?

Yugi stumbled out of his room about an hour later. His eyes and nose were red, as if he had a cold. But Atem knew it was from crying. Yugi sat down at the kitchen table and Atem made him a cup of coffee. Yugi took it with honest gratefulness and took a sip. A small caffeine fire started in Yugi's brain, but it wasn't enough to burn off the fog of sadness.

"Yugi?" Atem asked. Yugi stared at his cup of coffee. "What happened to you today? It's your birthday. The others are going to come over and have cake and give you presents. Why are you so sad?"

"… I don't want to be sixteen," Yugi said. His voice was strained.

"Why not?" Atem asked softly.

Yugi's bottom lip quivered. "I don't want to say," he said finally.

"Do you think that I wouldn't understand?" Atem's tone was not accusatory. An accusation would have made Yugi get on the defensive, and that would possibly take Atem even farther from the information he wanted to know.

"I think you would understand," Yugi said. "But… I don't want you to know. I don't want anyone to know. I don't even want to know."

"It sounds bad," Atem observed.

"Yeah," Yugi whispered. He took another sip of his coffee.

"And this just happened today?" Atem asked, trying to seem casual. Yugi nodded. "Temporary or permanent?"

"Permanent."

"Yugi," Atem said seriously. "You need to tell me the truth. Is this something that I should know?"

"… Not yet," Yugi answered. He finished his coffee and gave Atem a fake smile. "It's—it's no big deal. I was just overreacting. Um… what did you want to do for my birthday?"

Atem stared at Yugi and his switch of demeanor. "Not yet" was better than "no", but it was not as good as if Yugi had told him outright what was going on. Atem would wait for the one day in the future when Yugi to tell him all of his secrets: this one, the one in Egypt, and all the others in between. Yugi would tell. Atem just needed to give him time.

The only problem with this plan is that Atem had no idea at how good Yugi was at keeping secrets. Atem tried to stifle a chuckle as he imagined Yugi and himself decades later, each of them looking like Grandpa, and Yugi finally admitting what he had for all that time kept to himself.

"It's your birthday, Yugi. You should decide," Atem said.

"Okay," Yugi replied with the same false cheeriness. "I'm going to go take a…" He trailed off, and the fog of melancholy returned. "Take a shower," he said finally, and trudged off to the bathroom, where whatever horrors the shower was holding were awaiting him.


Yugi sat on a bench after school was over, staring at the concrete walkway that led onto the street from Domino High. His… abnormality… had caused him some problems. Gym had started and Yugi was not there. Atem was concerned—Yugi had never missed a class before. So he went into the changing room and saw Yugi standing there, just then slipping on the bottoms of his gym clothes.

"Yugi, you're late. What's keeping you?" Atem demanded. Yugi jumped when he heard Atem's voice and spun around, wrapping his arms around his waist.

"N-nothing, nothing," Yugi said quickly. "Just a little late, that's all. I'll be out in a minute." Atem looked at him with a mixture of disbelief, sadness, and disappointment. Yugi hated that expression. But it was either that or something much worse.

What was worse than disbelief? Disgust. What was worse than sadness? Anger. What was worse than disappointment? Nothing. The disappointment would stay, the worst of the three, the worst of anything that Atem could feel towards Yugi. And the worst, Yugi knew, could not be avoided.

Yugi had only three options: run away, stay and lie, or stay and tell the truth. Inevitably, each of those decisions would end in the dreaded disappointment. Atem was not and would not be proud of him anymore. Atem could not be proud of what Yugi had become.

Yugi slumped over, the weight of his backpack pressing down on him as if it was full of iron. Tears filled his eyes, and for the first time in three months, he let them fall. He finally let all those tears pour onto the pavement. Tears of sadness, tears of self-pity, tears of hopelessness, tears of anger, each of them rolled out of him and made dark spots on the concrete. But they did not wash Yugi's feelings away. They made his throat and head hurt instead.

For three months Yugi had lied, for three months he had made an excuse to creep away and spend the night alone in the dark. For three months he had seen what he was and not cried one tear. For three months he had not sang. For three months he had made himself look away from Tea whenever she was in the room for fear of what he might do to her. Three months, three horrible months of un-fallen tears now dripped madly off his cheeks and nose and trickled down his chin.

It was at that moment, when he was sobbing without restraint, when he was wet, itchy, and cold, that Atem sat down next to him. Atem put his arm around Yugi's shoulder and pulled Yugi into his chest, where Yugi let those three months of tears finally fall and drown him when he could not drown.