The Silent Land, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

Disclaimer: Tercentennially not mine.

A/N: This is part of a series I never actually intended to write. The full reading list can be found, with links to each fic, at obabscribbler. livejournal. com/425690. html, but I've included a reading list here as well. To fully understand this fic, I'm afraid you have to have read the preceding ones. The reading order is:

1. A Ship Sailing Over the Edge of the World

2. Forget Everything I Ever Told You

3. Postcard from the Edge of the World

4. The Silent Land

The Silent Land

Honda knew it was there before he saw it. He couldn't explain how. He, more than anyone, knew he possessed about as much magical insightfulness as a rutabaga, but somehow he knew. When he returned to his apartment he spent a moment leaning backwards against the door. Then he called Jounouchi.

"It's here. I got it this morning."

"Aw, man," Jounouchi replied, cursing. "You want me to come over?"

"No."

"So why are you calling me?"

Because, Honda thought, Jounouchi was more stressed over this than he was. Ever since he got one of his own, Jounouchi had been on edge, waiting for everyone else to get theirs. Sometimes he called; sometimes he waited until he actually saw them, but every day he slipped it into a conversation somehow or other.

"So … did you get yours yet?"

And Honda always had to reply, "No, not yet."

He'd said it so often that he'd begun to think maybe he wasn't going to get one at all. Part of him was annoyed at that, but another part was sort of glad. It made him feel disloyal, but that part was the part that had seen how messed up Jounouchi had been after his, and had listened as Mai recounted how morose his friend had become – and that was on top of the regular grief they were all feeling. That part of Honda was now terrified, and he found himself falling back on his old standby: being the dependable, level-headed half of his friendship with Jounouchi. The phone-call wasn't to alleviate Jounouchi's tension at all. It was to give Honda an excuse to be calm when inside he felt like his organs had been fed into a mincer and then crammed into a can of dog food.

"I just thought you'd want to know," Honda said into the phone.

"Um, okay. Did you read it yet?"

"No."

"… You gonna read it yet?"

"No."

"Honda -"

"I'll read it when I'm ready, Jounouchi. Let me do this my own way."

Jounouchi's tone turned dejected. "All right. But if you wanna talk afterwards, you call me, okay? Not some girl who didn't know … not some girl you've known for all of five minutes."

"You think I'd actually do that?" A hint of anger crept into Honda's voice. It was no secret that he couldn't keep hold of a girlfriend for more than the lifespan of a mayfly, and he wasn't exactly known for investing a lot in his relationships, but the idea that he would go to someone else before his friends got his back up.

"Well, no, but … I didn't mean … ah, shit, Honda, you know it all already. Just call me if you need me. Or come over. Mai got hers last week, so she's as clued up on this as I am."

"How clued up is that?"

"Not very, but enough."

It took a moment before Honda answered. "Thanks, man."

"No problem."

"No, not for that."

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

She wakes one morning with a headache that feels like it's going to kill her. It pulses behind her eyes so that when she opens them it hurts, and when she closes them again it hurts too. It hurts too much to go back to sleep, but getting up is unthinkable. She just lays in bed, sprawled on her back but face pressed sideways into her pillow because laying on her front has been uncomfortable since the days she started needing a training bra. Not that her withered boobs could cause her discomfort that way anymore, but some things never change, even if everything else does.

Eventually she has to get up for her morning stumble to the bathroom. The mirror is a damning reminder of how little refreshment sleep brings these days. The bags under her eyes are more like black sacks filled garden rubbish. She pulls at one, then lets go when fresh pain lances into her brain.

She fetches a drink from the kitchenette, and the cool water seems to help a little. A very little. Afterwards she retires back to bed, where she somehow falls asleep. She wakes when lunchtime is a distant memory and the drool on her pillow has had a chance to dry.

"Oh, yuck," she croaks. She has always hated her habit of drooling when she sleeps. It used to be a constant fear when she slept over at Yuugi's when they were kids. She wipes at her mouth, thinking again how some things never change.

Of course, some things change in a big way. She's thinking this as she finally drags herself out of bed for more than necessities, the pain in her head having receded to a dull ache. She's not hungry, but the doctors say she has to eat, so she makes toast and chews it slowly and methodically, trying to distract herself from the slurping in her stomach as it tries to decide whether it will keep what she's putting in or not.

Not, as it turns out.

"This sucks," she says to the porcelain bowl. "This really, really sucks."

"You have to be positive," the counsellor she has been given is always saying. "Thinking positively when it seems darkest is how you'll beat this."

"Actually, the port they just installed in my chest is how I'll beat this, but I'll give your ideas a whirl anyway," she replied smartly during her first appointment. The hurt look of concern on the woman's face made her regret her flippancy. Since then she has just smiled and agreed, wondering whether this was how people felt whenever she used to make speeches about the power of friendship and teamwork. It would certainly explain Seto Kaiba's attitude. Sceptics are a harsh crowd.

"Thinking positive sucks," she says as she brushes her teeth to get ride of the yucky flavour of bile. "This whole situation just plain sucks. Like a vacuum cleaner. A rocket-powered vacuum cleaner. On high." She spits, and then leans close to the mirror so her nose is almost touching it. "Talking to my own reflection sucks." She pauses, as if waiting for a reply. "Oh, man, I've sunk to a new sucky low. That's it; I'm breaking out the stationary."

Reading has gone out of the window since her concentration skills wandered off to sniff flowers and forgot the time. Likewise watching TV. She wobbles too much to practise dance routines these days – her legs and arms tremble with the effort it takes to perform moves she used to do without thinking. It's depressing as it is frustrating to realise how weak she has become.

Writing seems to help. She can start, get distracted by something else, but come back to it without reprisal when she's ready. She has to trek to the library to write an email, so writing by hand is more convenient – even if complying with her counsellor's wishes to 'write away her fears and worries' in a diary feels like giving in. The woman is far too whimsical for her own good, and besides, she has never been any good at diaries.

The scritch of pen against paper is comforting for reasons she isn't eloquent enough to define. Warmed by the sunshine through the skylight, she begins to write.

Honda climbed the stone staircase with slow, measured steps. The sun was warm against his back. He'd worked up a pretty good sweat by the time he reached the top, despite his unhurried pace.

He turned and looked out across Domino, marvelling at the panorama afforded by this spot. There weren't many hills in the city, but this was the tallest, and also happened to be right in the centre. Around it the rest of the city sprawled away like the white of a smashed egg. The dead had a good view of the living going about their daily lives.

Unlike western cemeteries, Japanese were almost always overcrowded and occupied by soaring monuments that made up for in height what they lacked in width. Honda stuck mostly to the access strips running in straight lines between the graves, but several times he had to wend his way between the tightly packed stone slabs and memorials. He glanced at the names of families as he passed: Watanabe, Yamamoto, Ito, Tanaka, Koga. The list went on and on, the ashes of several generations often buried together in a single family plot. Given how expensive plots were, this wasn't altogether surprising. Honda knew his own grandmother, grandfather and Uncle Hibiki were buried together in this cemetery.

He remembered the day he got the news that Uncle Hibiki, an articulated lorry driver, had been killed in a road accident. Honda's father was stunned practically to stone by the death of his brother, and at seventeen Honda had found himself in the unenviable position of comforting the man when he broke down.

Honda's father had always been a figure of authority in his son's life. A bear-like police officer, indomitable and larger than life, Hyotaru was ultimately the reason Honda was able to be Jounouchi's friend without being sucked into Hirutani's gang alongside him. He spent much of his childhood being terrified of his father, and was shocked when Hyotaru presented him with his first motorcycle driving lessons as a birthday present.

To see his father reduced by grief into something so small and vulnerable shook Honda to his core. For a long while afterward he'd been in shock. Jounouchi had been there for him, as had all his friends, but since Honda had never been especially close to Uncle Hibiki they found it difficult to understand why he'd been so badly affected by his death. Even Jounouchi had missed what was really bothering him, which had left Honda feeling alone and helpless in ways he found difficult to explain even now.

It was here, not long after the funeral, that he'd come to terms with the experience.

And it was here again that he found himself trying to understand how death and guilt could change your life when you knew that, rationally, there was nothing you could have done to prevent it.

He stood in front of the memorial stone without speaking. It wasn't much different than those on either side, save for the surname inscribed in the marble: Mazaki. Behind it the long wooden panels of several sotoba had been sunk into the earth, and on the newest was the name of the reason he'd come here today.

"Hey, Anzu," he said softly. "How's it going?"

She used to run or dance everywhere she went. Her friends used to laugh, or get embarrassed when she broke into a random box-step on the way home from school – all except Yuugi, but he was always a special case. He once tried to copy her and ended up falling over his own feet into a bush bordering someone's garden. When Jounouchi and Honda pulled him out he had a crisscross cut on his cheek and leaves in his hair.

"Dude, you look totally hardcore with that cut," Jounouchi said admiringly. "Just don't tell anyone how you got it. It'd ruin the mystique of they knew it came from battling a shrub."

"Tree," Bakura murmured.

"Say what?"

"Actually it's a, uh … Juniper, which is a … tree …"Bakura trailed off, embarrassed until Jounouchi nodded.

"I suppose a tree sounds better than a shrub, but I still wouldn't tell anyone, man. Tree or shrub, you're the one with opposable thumbs and it kicked your ass."

"This really stings," Yuugi said, touching the cut and pulling his fingers away to look at the blood.

"You're really bleeding. Hey, that'd be such a cool scar! Like Himura Kenshin, or Zack Fair. You should – yow!" Jounouchi held the top of his head, glaring at her and her bunched fist. "What the hell was that for?"

"Dude, if you don't know …" The rest of Honda's words were lost as he laughed at the way she just had to brandish her fist to make Jounouchi try to hide behind Yuugi.

"Men," she said, pulling out a tissue and blotting Yuugi's cheek with it. "Hold still. That looks pretty deep."

"I'm not a baby!" Yuugi protested, actually pulling away from her.

She was shocked, and stayed with her hands in the air for a few seconds before letting her arms drop to her sides. He'd never pulled away from her touch before. Though she knew it was only from loss of face, at the time it had upset her. It felt like he was moving away from her, as he had been since Egypt, or perhaps even before that.

There was a time when he would have let her clean him up, no problem. Before that, there was a time when he needed her because she was his only friend. There was a time when he needed her just to feel good about himself. Much as she liked his newfound confidence and faith in himself, at that moment it was hammered home to her just what they meant when taken together. When had Yuugi stopped needing her so much?

"All right then."

He was embarrassed. After living with Yami in his head for so long, he'd become accustomed to his 'cool' status, and the transition back to his own clumsiness twenty-four-seven grated on him whenever he slipped up. He was a much stronger, more confident version of himself, but he was still Yuugi Mutou, and some things never change.

Then again, sometimes they do.

She once thought her random acts of dance would never change, but she was wrong. These days she walks wherever she goes, and sometimes not even that. She has to take rests on benches or by sitting on low walls. Sometimes she feels as old as the pensioners she used to pity in their motorised wheelchairs, trying desperately to get through crowds without knocking into people or having their purses lifted. Now she'd kill for a ride from one.

People still stare as much as they did when she danced, though now she knows it's because of her appearance. Her port – the plastic nodule and access pipe inserted into the skin of her chest and used to administer her chemotherapy drugs – is hidden under her clothes most of the time, but its effects have become impossible for even the most casual observer to ignore.

"Well, what did you expect?" she told herself after she was done crying, the day a clump of hair came away in her hand in the shower. There's nothing more discouraging than weeping into your bathrobe and then cleaning the reason out of your plughole like it belongs in the trash. "They're injecting poisons directly into your body. It was never going to be pretty."

Of course there's a difference between 'not going to be pretty' and 'I look like I just crawled out of the primordial soup and what was already out there threw me back in'.

"I wish I could talk to you guys," she has whispered to herself so many times since this started. Her arguments for not telling her friends wear thinner and thinner with each passing day, and it's only through extreme willpower that she has held off for so long.

Yuugi's last email was full of news about how well Yami's adapting to modern life in his own body. Yuugi's stories of life back in Domino strengthen her resolve. Now that Mai has returned, Jounouchi is finally making a good life for himself away from his abusive father, and Mai herself is putting down roots the way she never felt she could before; Honda's career and love life are both advancing in leaps and bounds; Shizuka is doing great in school and visits Domino regularly; Otogi's company has expanded to compete on a global level with both Kaiba Corp and Schroeder Inc.; Bakura is so much happier now he has accepted the Spirit of the Ring is truly gone, and his life isn't about to be yanked from under him yet again … they all have the success stories they deserve after everything they've been through. They've reached their personal pots of gold at the end of a rainbow fraught with cyclones, thunderclouds, blizzards and the odd bout of lightning that strikes without warning.

She can't drag them away from the progress they're all making, which she knows is exactly what she'd be doing if she tells them now. They'd drop everything and rush over here, consequences be damned, because they're her friends and that would dwarf everything else. They wouldn't understand if she said she doesn't want them to come.

And, more than that, if they offered to get the next flight to New York she's not sure she could trust herself to say no, and she knows she'd regret not saying it for the rest of her life. Them being here wouldn't change anything that's happening to her, but it would sure change what's happening to them – jobs, education, living arrangements; the upheaval would be too much.

But when she's at her lowest ebb; when she wakes in the night covered in cold sweat, or crippled with pain like the morning, those are the times when she thinks it may not change anything, but from a purely selfish standpoint, having her friends with her would sure make this more bearable.

Which is why she has taken up writing to them – letters she never intends to send, but which allow her to vent the same way she would if they were standing in front of her. Her therapist is delighted that she has taken her advice, and she doesn't have the heart to tell the woman that the lines of what are, to her American eyes, unintelligible Japanese scribbles, aren't a proactive diary but a series of notes detailing things she wants her loved ones to know if she doesn't make it.

"You have to think positive!" her counsellor said when she staggered into an appointment and promptly staggered back outside to throw up noisily in a pot-plant. "Convince yourself that you'll survive and you will. Belief can move mountains, remember. Haven't you ever believed in something? I mean truly believed – not just saying the words, but feeling them, right down deep in your soul."

She remembers staring at the woman and thinking that yes, she has believed in something so hard her breath caught in her chest and the backs of her eyes started to hurt. She has believed with all her might that her friends will pull off miracles, save the world, save the day – save themselves. She has believed that if she crosses a desert she can rescue her best friend's soul and restore the confidence of an ancient pharaoh. She has believed that a boy who stopped breathing on a duelling field will pull through somehow. She has believed that a soul can be freed from the body of a robotic monkey, dragged out of the Shadow Realm intact, or combined with the love of a brother to turn an arrogant viper into an actual human being. And, what is more, she has never failed in her belief that if people pull together and care about each other enough, no matter their age, origin or obstacles, they really can change the world.

But she couldn't really say that to 'Hi-my-name-is-Valerie-and-I-want-you-to-talk-to-me-about-all-your-problems', so instead she just nodded and said, "Sure I have."

"Then believe in yourself and you'll be okay. Optimism will save you, young lady. Don't give in to the negativity!"

"Optimism and a weekly dose of chemotherapy," Anzu muttered on her way out of the cheerfully pastel office, with its frieze of dahlias across the walls and looped Beethoven CD. "Also, I believe that pot-plant may die from my radioactive vomit." It was the kind of thing Jounouchi might have said, and which she might at one time have smacked him for. Right then, however, mimicking his bravado helped. It was like having him around and stopped her wallowing in self-pity.

She puts down her pen and stretches. She has covered two sides in writing and glances at the clock to see that barely forty-five minutes have passed since she began. The words came easily, but now her hand hurts, so she decides to take a break.

Stomach still rebelling at the thought of food, on impulse she decides to take a stroll. She needs her daily dose of vitamins, after all – Vitamin D from sunlight, Vitamin S from smog, and Vitamin NY from letting New York's special survival instinct soak into her via osmosis between the sidewalk and the soles of her feet. She won't be gone long, she tells herself. After all, she has to stay within easy reach of her apartment building for if she gets tired. Taxis are expensive, and she'd rather crawl back than admit defeat and hail a cab. She still has her pride, after all.

Some things never change.

After the accident, Honda had done everything he was supposed to do, plus more besides. Uncle Hibiki had never married, and both his parents were dead, so the only family who could arrange his funeral was his brother's. Honda's father hadn't asked Honda to accompany him, but neither had he turned him away when he went to sit in vigil over Uncle Hibiki's remains the night before the funeral.

Together they'd sat, father and son, each contemplating his own thoughts as the night wore on and the sun slowly rose. Honda had watched as his father seemed to grow smaller and smaller, hunching further and further in on himself. When day broke and the rest of the family arrived, his father greeted them and went about the tasks he had to perform with dignity, but Honda's thoughts continued to run around inside his head like earthquake victims, ramming into each other, causing no end of damage and helping him not one damn bit.

His thoughts had been similarly frantic when he first heard about Anzu. That phone-call from Yuugi was the worst of his life, so it figured it was the one he recalled in perfect, horrifying clarity. Every stutter, every hitched breath, the way Yuugi eventually blurted the news like he was ripping off a band-aid, all of it was embedded in Honda's brain like a the handprint of a slap in dough.

Honda stared now at Anzu's name on the sotoba, recalling how she always used to underline her signature twice and draw a little heart underneath. He found an old nengajō the other day from her first year after moving away. She'd had to search high and low in New York for an equivalent to the special Japanese New Year postcards, since she wasn't willing to compromise and just send a doctored American Christmas card to her friends and family back home. Honda wasn't given to keeping hold of old junk. The only reason he still had the card was because it had fallen behind a cabinet he rarely went into. He'd just stared at it for a long time – so long, in fact, that seeing her name without the double-underline and little heart seemed wrong. The sotoba was unfairly dreary for someone who had always been so upbeat.

Against all logic it had been Anzu, not Jounouchi, who had found him in front of the Honda family grave. He recalled how he'd heard her approach, and how she'd waited for him to say something, then cleared her throat to announce her presence when he hadn't.

"You can't grieve for yourself and your dad as well, Honda."

He'd turned then, shocked by how quickly – and apparently without any clues – she'd cut to the heart of the matter. "Who told you -?"

"Nobody told me. I'm your friend. It's kind of required that friends notice this sort of stuff. You're hurting, but I've suspected from the beginning that it's not just because of your uncle. Or am I wrong?"

He'd turned away to look back at the sotoba bearing Uncle Hibiki's name. "You're not wrong."

"I wish I was."

"Me too." He'd waited several minutes before biting the bullet and saying, "I wish I could just take the hurt away, y'know? I wish I could put everything right and make my dad stop hurting so much, like we made Malik stop hurting when we got rid of his dark half in Battle City, or how Dartz became good at the end when he was freed from the Oricalchos. Saving the world wasn't exactly easy – I got turned into a friggin' monkey and had to carry Dinosaur Ryuzaki across a desert, and that was after he tried to kill me and Jounouchi – but it was more clean-cut. Beat a bad guy, win a card game, rescue a soul and bingo: world saved and everything back to normal. But this … this is so much harder. Smaller. But harder."

Anzu had replied without missing a beat, "I wouldn't say it's smaller."

She'd meant it, too. That was just the kind of person she was: sounded like something from Hallmark but meant every word. Those who knew her thought it was endearing. Those who didn't thought she needed to get a clue. Her tremendous faith in the world was eclipsed only by Yuugi's faith in people. Yuugi believed in everyone, no matter who they were or what they'd done. Anzu believed in her friends and the power of personal bonds. She knew that losing faith in the people you cared most about was as devastating as losing them completely. In one fell swoop, Honda had lost both his uncle and the childhood image of his father as infallible. His world had received a dose of reality he found difficult to swallow.

Very few people had ever seen Hiroto Honda cry. He rarely had any cause to. He reacted to tragedy by getting practical. He was the responsible one of the group, after all – Jounouchi was the courage, Yuugi was the compassion, Yami was the strength, Anzu was the heart and he was the dependability. Good old dependable Honda. Honda was reliable. You could count on Honda in a pinch. He may not have much duelling talent, and he contained as much magic as donkey piss contained Chanel No.5, but you could trust him to have your back in all the mundane ways that everybody forgot when they thought about saving the world.

However, on that day in front of his family's plot, Anzu had seen Honda crack. She'd seen him cry. She'd rubbed his back, passed him a tissue from her pocket, and afterwards hadn't breathed a word to anyone about it. Usually relegated to the sidelines together while their more capable friends duelled the bad guys, he and she had developed an unspoken connection of their own, and that had come into play again that day.

When Yuugi called to tell him she'd died Honda felt that connection break. He was still the dependable one of the group, but now he had nobody to snark with on the sidelines. There was nobody to smack Jounouchi on the head and mother them all. Mai and Shizuka tried, but it wasn't the same. Mai smacked Jounouchi, but then she kissed it better again. Shizuka attempted to mother them, but she was sweet, not bossy. Neither would spit on a tissue and try to clean their cheeks, the only dance they knew was the Macarena, and both had actual cooking talent. It just wasn't the same. He wanted Anzu back.

The unopened envelope in his pocket burned.

However, he put off opening it. Instead he turned around and sat with his back against the Mazaki plot He closed his eyes for a moment, tipped his head back and let the sun warm his face. It was a nice day, and this place was weirdly peaceful.

"I remember," he said without opening his eyes, "how before we were friends I thought you were such a big mouth, always poking your nose where it didn't belong and getting into other people's business. You always seemed to be spoiling some guy's fun, or that was how it seemed. I wasn't really one to judge, since my idea of fun was picking on kids smaller than me. Man, you used to chew me out for that stuff. Class president, remember? You took your role so seriously. Heaven help anyone dumb enough to pick on a kid in your class – especially if that kid happened to be Yuugi. If Ushio hadn't beat up on us, I swear you would've found some way to get back at us for hurting the little guy. Lucky for us Ushio beat you to it, huh? Even back then you were rabid about looking out for your friends. Despite how much you loved being Class President, you gave it up in a heartbeat so we could stow away on the liner to Duellist Kingdom." He shook his head. "God, I miss you, Anzu."

New York is a city with past. Even before the tragedy of the Twin Towers, it was a place that had seen all sides of life, and developed a harsher shrewdness than most cities. If America is a tribe, then New York is the wily nomad that only wanders into camp when it's convenient and intimidates the other tribesmen with tales of ultimate cruelty and ultimate humanity – usually played out within the same block radius.

There's something about the madhouse jangle that appeals to her. Perhaps it's a throwback to the generations of her father's family who lived here before they settled in San Francisco, or perhaps it's just her natural nosiness. No matter how much of it she sees, she always feels like she's learning more about this city whenever she steps outside. It's one of the reasons that she didn't want to leave and move to her father's San Fran condo when the troupe let her go. It would've been simple to transfer her treatment, and her father was more than willing to pay for everything, but she just wasn't – isn't – willing to let go of this smelly, abrasive, remarkable city.

Central Park is one of her favourite places. She wanders down a path, admiring how somewhere so peaceful can exist in such a bustling metropolis. When she reaches a bridge over a little brook she pauses, leaning on the handrail to catch her breath and admire the scenery. She can't see Cleopatra's Needle from here, though she has been to see it so many times it's practically tattooed on the insides of her eyelids. Being there feels like connecting her future with her past – her new life in New York with Yami and everything that happened because of him.

Thoughts of Yami make her sigh and drop her head. It will always be bittersweet, thinking of him. Once upon a time she thought herself in love with him. How naïve she was. At least most teenage girls get crushes on pop stars or actors – people with actual faces. But not her, oh no; she had to go and fall for a bodiless voice. How pathetic is that? And the things she did while infatuated with him … her toes curl even now at the memories. Not her Finest Hour. Not her Pretty Good Hour, either, or even her Adequate Hour.

But it's all different now, isn't it? Yami isn't just a bodiless voice anymore. He stopped being that a long time ago. Now he has a body and a life all his own, and he's using both to chase the thing that eluded him for millennia: happiness. She still finds it difficult to believe he bargained his way back from the afterlife, though she's not sure why. Yami, Atem, Nameless Pharaoh – whatever title he's working under, he's always been great at pulling off miracles, especially if they're for Yuugi.

Her heart gives a little flip-flop. She rebukes it. That's all over with now. She missed her chance and that's all there is to it.

It's not like she hasn't had relationships since that day Yami walked into the Game Shop and back into their lives. She has, both in Domino and New York. It's just that they've all been as quick and complex as the highest score on a pinball machine, and about as memorable.

She pushes herself off the handrail and continues on with her walk. It doesn't take long for her to get tired, and soon she's looking for a park bench. The only one she can find, however, is occupied, and the couple doing the occupying are too absorbed in each other to notice that a girl in unseasonable headgear would like to sit down. Even if she did sit down, she thinks, their thrashing would probably knock her off again.

She sighs and carries on, eventually contenting herself with a grassy mound next to a flowerbed. She spreads her jacket under her and leans back, enjoying the feel of the sun and the lack of anything pressing on her time. Since being forced to leave the troupe she has spent many days wondering what to do with herself, but at times like this it's nice not to have to worry about time limits, other things she should be doing or prior engagements. She shuts her eyes and tips her head back.

"I remember," she says to herself, not opening her eyes, "doing this back in Domino Park. I'd packed a picnic and Jounouchi went and bought hotdogs for everyone from a vendor because my food was so bad. Bakura had to spot him some cash because he was short, as usual, but those hotdogs tasted better than anything I'd ever eaten even though they were probably made from the stuff dog food manufacturers didn't want. Afterwards we all lay down on the grass even though we weren't supposed to. Yuugi was so worried the park keeper would yell at us. He kept sitting up and looking around like a rabbit, or one of those merekats from TV, until Yami put his arm around him so he couldn't get up anymore even if he'd wanted to. And Mai was wolf-whistling, wasn't she? Funny; I would've expected that from Jounouchi, but he was … doing something else. What was it?" She frowns. "I can't remember."

All at once she opens her eyes. The illusion that it's years earlier and she could be back in Domino Park with her friends is shattered. This isn't Japan. She's not a teenager anymore. There aren't any relaxed bodies scattered around her and she can't remember the last time she ate a hotdog.

She draws her legs up and wraps her arms around them, pressing her face into her knees. "God, I miss you guys so much right now."

"I think I get why you wanted to go it alone." Honda picked at a blade of grass that had worked its way through the concrete. It was probably really symbolic, but he wasn't thinking and just pulled it out to roll between his fingers as he talked. "Not that I agree with it or anything. I'm with Jounouchi: you were a complete idiot, and if you want to reach down from heaven to smack me for saying that, go right ahead."

In a nearby tree a bird cheeped. Other than that, everything was quiet. You couldn't even hear the snarl of traffic from up here.

Honda drew his knees up and balanced his arms across them. "Idiot," he said again. "Stupid, self-sacrificing idiot. Who, exactly, were you doing a favour for? Didn't you think how pissed we'd all be when we eventually found out? How hurt Yuugi would be, not to mention the rest of us. You were the one who always made such a big deal about the power of friendship. You were making the friendship speeches before Yami got all overdramatic about them on the duelling field. Why didn't you take your own advice? You could run into a magical death-trap for your friends, but you couldn't pick up a phone to tell us you were sick? Damn it, Anzu, I can't decide whether to be sad or mad at you."

Mai said Jounouchi was the same when he got his letter – so mixed up inside he could barely tell his ass from his elbow. Yuugi wasn't mad at her, though. Yuugi could never be mad at Anzu, not really.

Honda snorted. "Beat a bad guy, win a card game, rescue a soul and bingo: world saved and everything back to normal. That was supposed to be the hardest thing we ever did. We were a bunch of high school kids and we saved the freaking world. It wasn't exactly a piece of cake. I think we earned the right to an easy ride after that. Then the hardest thing we ever did was supposed to be saying goodbye to Yami. Then it was supposed to be readjusting to life without him or the Millennium Items. Each thing we did was supposed to be the hardest, even though the problems kept getting smaller compared to saving the world, and each time I was thinking: Is this it? Is this the part where it starts getting easier?"

The bird in the tree gave a last trill and flew away.

"Living just happens. You live without even thinking about it – breathing, eating, sleeping and all that junk. It's involuntary. Who has to work at it? Just living isn't supposed to be hard at all. I'm not hooked up to any life support machines. I don't have to carry an oxygen bottle around with me. I can walk. I'm fit and healthy. Just living is the smallest problem I'm supposed to have. " Honda shook his head. "But smaller doesn't mean easier, remember?"

She wakes with a start. Her heart is pounding and she's bathed with sweat, which makes her shiver when a breeze blows. The day has grown cooler while she broke the cardinal rule of New York living: Don't fall asleep in public.

Well, one of the cardinal rules after 'Don't call it NY' and 'Never stand in front of a door to hold it open for others because you're taking up valuable space people could be running through if they pushed the door open their own damn selves'. Politeness is something that only exists if it's not slowing traffic in the breakneck world of the average New Yorker.

She was dreaming, she remembers. The images are already starting to fade, but she knows she was wandering corridors that looked a lot like the inside of the Millennium Puzzle. She'll never forget the curious feel of that place from when they passed through it on their way into the Memory World, and that was exactly the feeling that suffused her dream. She was looking for someone she couldn't find, so she kept opening doors onto empty rooms, too scared to leave the main corridors. She knew that things lay beyond the square of light cast just inside each doorway – things that would chew up her soul and spit it out like a piece of old gum that had lost its flavour.

But she couldn't fin who she was looking for, so eventually she decided to take a risk. She stepped into a room when she movement from the shadows inside. The moment she did, the floor gave way beneath her. She scrabbled to save herself and clung onto the remaining blocks with nothing but darkness below her. Her fingers started to slip, and then …

She holds her forehead. And then Yuugi was there, catching her arm and pulling her up with impossible strength, considering he has all the chest muscles of a toast rack. He helped her out of the void and laughed when she threw her arms around him.

"I was looking for you for so long," she remembers saying into his hair. She could smell his hair, just the way it always smelled – redolent of Grandpa Mutou's coffee, deodorant and the cheap fabric softener he used on his pillowcase. Her senses betrayed her, convincing her he was real even though part of her knew he couldn't be. "I thought I'd lost you."

"It's okay," Yuugi said, smiling. "You'll always have me."

But even in her dream she knew it wasn't true. She just had to look at where they were to know that. "I thought I was going to fall."

"You would've been okay even if you had."

"Because you'd be there to catch me? You and the others?"

"No, because this is a dream. Even if you'd fallen, something would have happened to save you. That's how it works. As long as you're dreaming, there's always a way out." He smiled again. Then he vanished.

She screamed his name, reaching for him even though he wasn't there anymore, and woke up.

She shivers again, getting to her feet and putting on her jacket. The fabric is cold, but it's better than bare arms. She pats herself, staring up at the sky. It has become overcast and the nice sunny day she fell asleep in now promises rain. She has to get home. Moreover, she thinks as she pats her pockets, she has to thank her lucky stars that she wasn't robbed while she slept. Maybe people saw her sprawled on the grass and decided she'd already been mugged, or maybe even the muggers couldn't bring themselves to rob a pathetic specimen like her. Both options are pretty depressing in their own way.

When she passes over the little bridge she pauses again, but this time instead of leaning on it to admire the brook she stares at the water like it's a crystal ball and she's a fortune-teller who can see the future in it. Things would be a lot easier if that were true. Everything in her life seems to have been put on hold since the diagnosis, and she's suddenly sick of waiting to know whether she'll beat her illness. She'd like to know what her future holds.

"As long as you're dreaming, there's always a way out."

"But I'm not dreaming, Yuugi," she murmurs. "I really, really wish I was, but I'm not."

The tug-o-war feeling comes back in a surge like a riptide: the desire to have her friends with her, consequences be damned, versus wanting them to stay in Domino where their lives are. She wants Jounouchi's dumb confidence that everything will be okay. She wants Mai's smart mouth and the streetwise toughness she always coveted when Mai was able to wear a micro-mini and still look too competent not to be taken seriously. She wants Yami to tell her he can fix her problems, and Bakura's gentle acts of kindness; Otogi's ability to make her feel underdressed in her wildest outfit, and Shizuka's knack of making her feel like she's as tough and knowledgeable as Mai even though she's not. She wants to stand next to Honda and draw strength from his constancy, and she wants to see Yuugi again and hear him say …

Hear him say what? That he still loves her? He'd say that in a heartbeat, and mean it too, but not the way she wants – not anymore. That would've been there once, if she'd been self-aware enough to realise her own desires, but she wasn't, and now he has Yami. She thought she'd reconciled herself to that, especially since they're so obviously, sickeningly happy together, but apparently she hasn't. Or perhaps being confronted with her own mortality has inspired in her the kind of clarity that only comes when you look at your life as a whole and pick out the things you truly regret.

Is that why, as much as she craves having her friends here with her, she won't call them? Is that the real reason? The thought jolts through her like lemon juice in milk.

A bird chirrups and flies out of a nearby tree. The noise and movement break her from her unpleasant reverie.

"Maybe I'm really not as good a friend as I like to think I am," she mutters, hands balling into fists.

Suddenly, despite knowing it's the worst idea in the history of Bad Things To Do While Undergoing Chemotherapy That Leaves You Weak As A Newborn Kitten, she hooks her left foot into the latticework of the bridge and clambers up. It takes a moment to find her balance on the handrail, even though it's quite wide, which only makes her boil up more. Not so long ago she could have performed a perfect arabesque on a surface half this size. Both cancer and cure have robbed her of more than she ever felt she could reasonably give up.

It's easier to blame the cancer for all her problems and mixed up feelings than it is to blame herself.

Clenching both fists so tight she leaves half-moon nail marks in her palms, she leans forward and screams at the top of her lungs. It's a long, wordless cry that starts in her toes and gathers speed as it travels upwards through her body. Each wasted muscle and labouring organ it passes only adds more momentum, until it leaves her mouth with a force that should uproot all the trees in the area. She imagines them flying backwards, and at the end it'd be only her in the centre of a circle of destruction – the eye of the storm. The scream rolls up all her anger and frustration and flings it out at the world.

Afterwards she's breathless and shaking. She has to sit down with her feet dangling over the edge because she thinks she might topple over and fall into the brook. Can you drown in water that shallow? She stares at the surface again, feeling hollowed out.

"Are you all right, dearie?" An old woman has come up behind her. "I heard screaming and thought someone was being attacked." At her feet a small Pekingese strains at its leash. It starts to yap as soon as it realises there's no chance a bigger dog will come along and try to use it as a chew toy.

"No." She means nobody was being attacked, but the old woman misunderstands.

"You're not all right? Oh dear. Would you like me to fetch a park keep- … oh dear, you're bleeding!" She opens her purse and grubs around inside, eventually bringing out an ancient packet of paper hankies. She looks panicked. "I'm sorry, the sight of blood … I'm not very good at this sort of thing. Highly squeamish. Can't even bandage my own finger if I cut myself while cooking, doncha know. Oh dear. You poor dear."

"Huh?" The coppery tang in the corner of her mouth and wetness on her upper lip tells her what's going on. She accepts the hankies and presses one to her nose. "Thank you."

She has a wig at home, but she refuses to wear it. It's itchy and looks fake, and she hates it, but she has it anyway. It was kind of expected for her to get one, but a single trip outside with people staring and the 'realer than real hair ™' convinced her she never wanted to wear it again. The old woman's rheumy eyes flick over the scarf habitually wrapped around her scalp instead, thoughts crossing her wrinkled face like dumplings bumping into each other in a thin stew. The pity isn't as hard to bear as she used to think it would be. Amazing what you can get used to over time.

"Are you all right, dearie?" the old woman asks again. She's trying to be kind, but the question is so stupid it's difficult to keep a lid on a rude reply. "Goodness, what a silly question to ask. Do you need any help? Can you stand up?"

"Iss fine." The reply is muffled by the tissue and trying to pinch the bridge of your own nose while talking. "Happens alla time."

The old woman chews her lower lip in the manner of one who has no idea how to deal with a situation, but still can't bring herself to just walk away. "Hush, Oscar," she says sharply to the Pekingese. The little dog quiets for a moment, but starts yapping again as son as his mistress takes her eyes off him. "Do you need me to get you a cab, dearie?"

"No, really, iss abs'lutely fine."

"It's no trouble. I was just on my way home. I could help you to the gates -"

"Really. It's fine." The reply snaps out like a whip, flicking the woman in the face and actually making her flinch.

"Well … if you're sure."

"I am." At the woman's expression she softens. Who does she think she is, biting the hand of kindness – Seto Kaiba? "Thanyou. F'r the hankie. 'Preciate it."

"Well, um, yes. Yes, of course. Think nothing of it. Now if you're … yes, yes, of course you are. Well … come along then, Oscar." The old woman's legs move like pistons as she scuttles away; looking back over her should every ten steps as if she expects a splash, or perhaps another scream.

"What's the world coming to, when you can't have a perfectly rational screaming session in a public park without little old ladies coming to check up on you, huh?" The wobbly reflection below doesn't reply. Despite being very shallow, the water is quite dark and she can't tell where the bottom is. In fact, it's almost black …like shadows stretching below her, waiting to swallow her up …

"Even if you'd fallen, something would have happened to save you."

The laughter bubbles up just like the scream did only minutes earlier. She tries to hold it in. She can't. "Somehow I always thought my guardian angel would be wearing vinyl and chains, not a floral-print muumuu."

She hurries home as fast as she is able. Once inside she knows she should take a short nap and eat something, but instead she sits back at the table and pushes away the letter she started earlier. She takes out a fresh sheet – and pauses.

Her first impulse is to write to Yuugi, but now she comes to actually do it something in her resists. If it happens, her letter to Yuugi will be special. If the chemotherapy doesn't work, she will want to tell him … everything. All of it. If the time comes, she will leave nothing out – not her feelings, not her own stupidity and bad timing, nothing. Anything else she tries to write to him will sound hollow to her own ears, so she puts aside that particular unsent letter and contemplates the one she's about to start. Considering what she knows she wants to write, only one person springs to mind.

No matter how their circle of friends grew, it was always her, Yuugi, Honda and Jounouchi at the heart of it all. They were together for every single crisis from the very beginning, supporting each other and wearing the memory of their 'special sign' on the backs of their hands like it was some sort of invisible gang tattoo. Of the four of them, however, Honda was always her sideline-buddy, the two of them sharing feelings of powerlessness each time their closest friends threw themselves at the enemy with nothing but piece of cardboard in their hands. Honda knows what it's like to feel helpless and totally, inescapably human in the face of danger.

Furthermore, he knows how just because a crisis is smaller than saving the world doesn't mean it's any easier to overcome. Honda has been swept away by guilt and remorse the way she was on the bridge. Honda has faced the frailty of himself and triumphed to become a better person when people who don't even realise it are counting on him to be strong, and to not crack and ask for comfort just because it would be easier on him.

She uncaps her pen.

Honda finally withdrew the envelope from his pocket. He gazed at it for a while before taking out the penknife on his belt and running it along the edge of the flap.

The sheets of paper inside were folded double and crammed with Anzu's distinctive writing. He'd always thought she had pretty writing. In school it'd made him feel bad about his own spidery scrawl, though he'd never told her that, nor made any attempt to improve it.

Keeping his back to the place her ashes were buried, he began to read. Her voice was in the marks on the pages. He could hear it, clear as if she was right next to him – which, in a way, she was. The Anzu who had written these words reached across time and space to speak to him, though around him in the cemetery only silence reigned.

Very few people had ever seen Hiroto Honda cry. By the time he reached the end of her letter, Anzu Mazaki had the dubious honour of being the onlyone to see it twice.

She finishes with a sharp exhalation, as though she has just run a marathon or put down something heavy. She drops her pen with a flamboyant gesture and leans back in her chair, sucking on her lips in thought. The tastes of copper makes her realise she never washed her face after she got back from the park. That was hours ago. For the first time today her stomach growls, so she hastens to the bathroom to clean up and then plunks two slices of bread into the toaster.

Sitting back down with her toast and peanut butter – she became an addict as a kid, when her father yearned for American food and paid over the odds for real crunchy peanut butter from the USA Shop in downtown Domino – her eyes wander to the skylight. Evening has drawn in, turning the sky from one shade of grey to another. Despite the colour, she feels satisfied and somehow renewed. Today has ended better than it started out.

"I'm going to beat this," she says softly. "I'm going to survive. I'm going to do it, because that's what we do, right guys? We survive and find some other disaster to get into instead, and I'm pretty interested to see what the universe can come up with next." A thought occurred to her. She put down her plate and took up her pen once more. "So don't you guys go getting yourselves killed or sick either, okay?"

Honda ran across a certain line in the letter and pulled up short. He glanced back over his shoulder. "You're dead and yet you're still bossing us around." She shook his head. "Some things really do never change."

But sometimes they did. Sometimes things changed in a big way. That was just the nature of it all, which, despite all he'd ever been through, Honda was only just coming to proper terms with. It didn't matter whether the changes were big or small, easy or difficult, secret or obvious; they were always going to happen. It was how you coped with them that counted.

"You did it, Anzu. You didn't let it beat you. Screw anyone who says those of us who don't duel can't win important fights. You won."

A bittersweet victory if ever there was one.

Honda carefully refolded the letter and put it back in its envelope. Then he took out his cell phone and called the first number in its memory.

Jounouchi picked up on the second ring. "Hey, man. You okay?"

"I'm okay. Listen, you want to meet up later?"

"Sure. Should I call Yuugi?"

"Yeah." Honda looked at the envelope with his name and address on it, then tucked it into his pocket. It was addressed to him, but he got the feeling there were things in his letter that the others should know, too. If nothing else, Anzu's life had proved the importance of friends, friendship, and not keeping secrets from each other. Honda wasn't the most demonstrative of people, but he sensed a bout of manly mushiness in the offing – possibly with the help of a beer or two to loosen their tongues first. "Yeah, that'd be great. And Jounouchi?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks, man."

"For what?"

"Just … thanks."

I was looking for you for so long.

I thought I'd lost you.

It's okay.

You'll always have me.

Even if you'd fallen, something would have happened to save you.

That's how it works.

As long as you're dreaming, there's always a way out.

Fin.

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

-- Remember by Christina Rossetti

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

He stood in front of the memorial stone without speaking. It wasn't much different than those on either side, save for the surname inscribed in the marble: Mazaki. Behind it the long wooden panels of several sotoba had been sunk into the earth, and on the newest was the name of the reason he'd come here today.

-- A typical Japanese grave usually consists of a stone monument, with a place for flowers, incense, and water in front, and a chamber or crypt underneath for ashes. The date of the erection of the grave, the name of the person who purchased it and the names of the deceased are often, but not always, engraved on the side of the monument – unlike western graves where it's pretty much unthinkable to have an unmarked headstone. In Japan, when a married person dies the name of the surviving spouse may also be engraved on the stone, but the letters are painted red to show they're still alive. After their death and the burial the red ink is removed from the stone. This is usually done for financial reasons, as Japanese funerals and graves are the most expensive in the world. It's cheaper to engrave two names at the same time than to engrave the second name when the second spouse dies. It can also be seen as a sign that a widow or widower is waiting to follow their loved one into the grave. However, this practice is less frequent nowadays. Often, as is the case with Anzu in this fic, the name of a deceased person is written on a sotoba, a separate wooden board on a stand behind or next to the grave. These may be erected shortly after death, and new ones added at certain memorial services. For a picture of what a typical Japanese graveyard looks like, check out qjphotos. files. wordpress. com/2008/09/yanaka-graves-3. jpg. Once again I am research's bitch.

"You're really bleeding. Hey, that'd be such a cool scar! Like Himura Kenshin, or Zack Fair."

-- Himura Kenshin is a character from Rurouni Kenshin (dubbed as Samurai X) and Zack Fair is a character from the Final Fantasy VII games.

He found an old nengajō the other day from her first year after moving away. She'd had to search high and low in New York for an equivalent to the special Japanese New Year postcards, since she wasn't willing to compromise and just send a doctored American Christmas card to her friends and family back home.

-- The Japanese celebrate New Year's Day on January 1st each year; although before 1873 it was based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar and celebrated at the beginning of spring, just as the contemporary Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese New Years are today. New Year is one of the most important annual festivals in Japan and has been celebrated for centuries with its own unique customs, some of which seem pretty darn strange to westerners. One of the more familiar customs is the sending of nengajō, or New Year's Day postcards, to friends and relatives. It's rather like the western custom of sending Christmas cards, although the original purpose of nengajō was less about sending season's greetings than just letting people you don't see very often know you're alive and well. Ironic, then, that Honda found one from Anzu when she was clearly … neither.

-- It was really strange, trying to write about New York when I've never been there. I'd like to go someday, though hopefully I wouldn't fall into too many of the Brit Abroad stereotypes (no asking waiters in posh restaurants if they do chips for me). The 'unwritten rules' about living in New York in this fic are informed by the books of Paul Auster (especially Oracle Night), several skits by Billy Connolly, and the invaluable website Marion's New York (www. marionsnewyork. com/marionsnewyork).

-- Right back at the beginning of this series I said that it was informed by personal experience. That hasn't changed. There's always a degree of what makes me who I am in what I write (as there is for every writer), but there's even more than usual in the Ship Sailing series. Consequently, I think it's rather fitting that something so close to my heart is my 300th fic here on FFN; especially since, personally, I think this fic is better than the original.

And well done to the sharp-eyed amongst you who guessed this was my 300th fic from the disclaimer.