Disclaimer: No copyright infringements intended. This story was written by a fan for entertainment purposes only.
Author´s Notes: I wrote this story already a while ago, after reading the ending of the Yugioh mangas. After realizing that, aside as one of Yami´s former high priests, Seto has no more appearances in the story anymore. It kind of made me sad…
Spoilers for that ending of Battle City and all that comes after it.
(The whole story is written in Malik´s POV)
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- WITHIN -
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Today...
Today I saw a dragon.
It was great. The darkness that had covered our all futures and hopes had finally lifted, and with the fist shades of sun, it was there, raising it's giant body from the ground. It was a breath-taking view…
But it also was sad.
For it was the last dragon that had risen it's impressing body and lifted from earth. I maybe can never tell how I did, but I simply knew it. It was the last one, that was going to go on it's journey. And we all watched it go.
It was so beautiful.
I was standing there, with all my family I had thought I'd lost for so long ago and watched it rise. For a moment, a ethereal, timeless moment, it had fulfilled what nobody of us had never dared to hope. We all had been ´together´. We watched it rise, drawing close to us as it reached the height of our ship.
A last greeting.
Another, final, time their eyes met. The old opponents, Apep and Ra, Seth and Horus, sheltering darkness and charging light, met a last time with their eyes, fighting an eternal old contest that always was the same. He, the dragon, didn't pay any attention to anybody else of us, then. Just his old opponent counted.
Sapphire and Rubin. Silver and Gold.
None of them showed any emotion on their face. Would there be another fight? We all knew it. The one who personified the dragon would never accept defeat and just lay low. Like the one who represented the gods would never allow the dragon to simply rise past.
They were in a tie.
We all waited for the dragon to react. To replay the old game and throw his head back and roar in defiance. To show the immortal his untainted powers and call him up for yet another fight. It always courted it's disaster. Even I, along with my sister and brother, who had barely known these people for any longer than a few days imminently knew of this rite. It was like a natural law. Nothing and nobody could ever change it.
Bit it didn't.
He didn't.
The dragon in human disguise we had met, watched and some of us even had fought, didn't dare the pharaoh like he always had. He had just stared at him. I remember, back then, the expression in his deep, deep unfathomable eyes.
It hadn't been like anytime else. There was none of the usual fierceness, the sheer, bold will to taste life, none of it's usual likes. Only… something else.
What had it been?
Remorse? Wistfulness? Regret? Or maybe even a little bit of sadness about what he would be leaving behind? I still, until this day, don't know what the expression in his night-blue eyes was back then, in that faithful moment. First, when he'd risen to our outside deck's height, he had only stared at the pharaoh. Looked at him like he wanted to imprint his face, form, his very person into the very depths of his deepest mind, to preserve the image of him there forever… The pharaoh had returned his gaze calmly, if not a little interrogating himself.
The dragon hadn't reacted.
Hadn't risen up to the last one of their countless challenges. Now I know he probably hadn't cared anymore. It had become part of his past. We all know that Seto Kaiba, the dragon, had never cared much about what laid in the past. Just learned of it and then cast it away. Where it belonged. I didn't understand much of the encoded wisdom that's hidden behind those words. Now, I think I do.
It's simple.
Really simple.
Just take that of what lays behind you and keep the parts that inspired you, and enabled you to encounter every new day of what was in your future. Don't dwell on bad things that had happened before. They already have. You held no power over them, couldn't change them… So just put them aside and concentrate onto the now.
It's the Now that counts not the Then.
Something important that I learned from him in the aftermath, not from the all-benevolent pharaoh. It had served me quite well up to now. Unlike some other well meant wisdoms I've heard, this one was to be of proper use. I'm still thankful to him for it.
But back then, he, the dragon hadn't restricted his attention only to the pharaoh, who had been his formidable opponent for so long. No. It hadn't. First, I thought he'd do it. Like any one of us must have thought. Because when he moved his gaze, none of us was any less surprised. Though I somewhat doubt that any of us had known what that look had meant…
Breaking his staring contest with the pharaoh silently, he moved his head ever so slightly, imprinting each of our else's faces in his formidable memory as well. No one was left out. I felt a tingle going down my spine as his unearthly, nightly blue eyes bore into mine. Back then I felt as if he was silently asking me something. I still feel it every time I close my eyes and remember those shining orbs.
It only halted for a second. Then, his eyes strayed, shifting from me over to touch the proud form of my sister and a little bit after that, moved on to my older brother, who stood behind us like a sheltering pillar. On him they lingered for a moment too, as if their owner silently recognized all the hardships Rishid had faced in life to care for who he considered his family and keep us safe. Then, the eyes travelled further, until they came to rest on the nameless pharaoh again.
He had completed his turn, made his last impression unto our lives. Seeing this must have filled him with some hidden kind of amusement. Then, seconds before he was to turn his back and leave us forever within, he did what he'd never done before.
He smiled at us.
Not a pure, innocent grin, like you'd expect little children and the really innocent to have; but his very own small, silent grin. A lightly crooked version of a real smile that belonged to a soul that had already been lost once before and that had been regained. But he grinned. Small, and with a tiny bit of mirth in it, but it wasn't thus any less honest.
Raising his index and his middle finger in a mocking sign of goodbye, he still spared a last look at us, before soaring high above. Past us. Listening to the slowly fading sound of his machine's engines, I could have sworn to have heard something else underneath it.
The sound of the flapping of majestic wings that was slowly turning faint…
He was gone, then.
It took us a long time to realise. Back on the airship and even a lot more of time even we were on the ground and had returned to the safety of our own homes.
The last dragon was gone…
He had left, after that last, faithful battle. After having made sure that his opponent was able to deal with even the darkest of all desires and beings. He had spread his wings and flew to his Avalon. A sanctuary that forever would only be for his and the ones like him alone.
I had felt it already back then.
That I and my both siblings would never see a hair of Seto Kaiba ever again. And neither would the others. They just took longer to realize. Sure, there was still Mokuba, and he was there, aiding them for good. But as close and familiar they were, the younger Kaiba had never shared his older brother's draconic nature.
The last dragon had left earth.
He left a painful void.
First they didn't notice, but after the white fiend had followed his lead, they, too, slowly started to realize. Our time was dieing. The time of the great duellists was running out and would never to be returned. I already knew it because I had seen it in his gaze. It was strange…We were never nothing any real more than loose acquaintances. Two people who had followed the same road for a few strides, barely sparing the other more than a chaste look. Yet his eyes had touched something deep my soul, within that few seconds of our last, first real eye contact.
So it was not surprising to me when the pharaoh came in his quests for his memories to me and asked me for my aid. Or rather, no surprise with my decision to grant it to it without any counter-requests. I just did it. Ignoring the burning darkness that still (and probably forever during all my life-long existence) dwelled in me, I aided him unreservedly. Though, I have to admit; that submission wasn't without any reason.
Like the others, I waited for my turn. I had realized it back then, when his sapphire-blue gaze had met mine. Had understand his silent words, thought I was back then not knowing the right- the only, answer.
His eyes had asked:
´I'm going now. Will you come, too´
Back then, and whenever I remembered those eyes, my answer had been: ´Not now.´ But with this day, this very minute where the late pharaoh Atem had regained his full memories and finally made himself onto his journey to the Netherworld or wherever else people like him would go, I knew that the right time had come. Everybody else was watching the sacred Millennium Items glowing and slowly destroying themselves, drawing the structure of the old building we were standing in within destruction as well.
When they realized what was happening, they all panicked. Running quickly, they all hurried to bring themselves into safety. I first went too, to make sure that my beloved older sister and brother wouldn't get hurt, but then, when we reached the last chamber before the entrance, I stopped. I did take good care that nobody of them noticed too soon, thought.
When I was sure that everybody had made it outside safely, I allowed myself a little smile. My job was done within this realm. Turning towards the crumbling bowels of the building, I felt once again the sensation of a pair of unseen eyes watching me.
Again, they were asking me if were ready to come with them. This time, however, my answer turned out different than all the times before.
´Yes. I'll be right on my way.´
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- END -
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The last dragon had left...
...and the last phoenix has followed it´s lead.
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- FOREVER -
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