Hard to move through the chains that bind him hand and foot.
Hard to breathe past the gag shoved roughly into his mouth.
His eyelids flutter and he moans with pain. Even in sleep, he finds no rest; all he can muster is an uneasy doze.
He is reluctant to wake. In sleep, he can sometimes see the faces of the ones he used to love, the ones who used to love him. Sometimes, he dreads it, longing to escape to the sharper, cleaner agony of his own wretched condition, but at least it reminds him of a distant time when he still had his humanity, when he had not been reduced to a starving scrap of memory. He murmurs their names and struggles to drag their faces out of the fog. When he wakes, he can no longer remember.
At last, he opens his eyes. Once a vivid blue, now dull and lifeless from years of imprisonment.
He has long since given up hope of rescue. No one even remembers him now. Most don't know he ever existed. Sometimes he hardly remembers himself.
Yes, there is pain here, in the cold and lonely blackness of his soul, and yes, there is suffering.
But the worst torment is that he is forced to watch.
"Please, Kaiba, let us help you."
"I don't need your friendship, Yugi, or your help." His own voice, the voice of the man he has become.
Please Yugi, don't listen to me, he whispers, a single tear sliding down one wasted cheek. Help me.
But the feeble sound is muffled through the gag he has forced upon himself; years of silence and repression have stripped away his voice. Instead, he is forced to watch through his own eyes, forced to listen to himself say harshly, "Just leave me alone."
No, don't go. Please, I need you. Please don't go…
Yugi turns away.
Despair overwhelms him. He cries, the way hewill not allow himself to cry, the tears carving trails down his filthy cheeks. Alone in the dark, he cries, bowed down with the weight of his chains, sobs muffled by the gag…Alone in the dark, he has come to realize…
They are chains of his own making.