Disclaimer: Not mine, never were.

A/N: Written for Christa Winters as part of the Boiz and Gurlz ficlet-request meme on LiveJournal. She requested a Spirited Away/YGO crossover featuring Haku and Anzu. Please do NOT tell me this is not long enough or not a real fic. It is a ONE SHOT and intended to be only a snippet of a possible situation that might occur if these two universes interacted.

Take Me to That Other Place

© Scribbler, December 2007.

You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place,
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace.

Touch me,
Take me to that other place;
Teach me,
I know I'm not a hopeless case.

-- From Beautiful Day by U2.

"Get up."

Anzu raised her face from her knees. Her cheeks were waffled and it took a second for her vision to stop blurring enough for her to focus on the boy in front of her. He was short, slightly built, with delicate features like some ancient European aristocrat. He was beautiful but cold, looking down at her with something like disapproval burning in his brown eyes.

"Do your ears not work?"

"I'm never getting up again," Anzu replied lifelessly. "What's the point?"

"It was not a request. If you do not wish to join your companions then I suggest you get up and follow me."

Anzu glared at him. She wondered how many other people had died in this horrible place. She wondered how many others had run blindly across the dark landscape, chased by things with teeth and claws and more eyes than any creature should ever need. Was this where people went when they ended up as pictures on milk cartons? All those kids, all those lost wives, husbands, mothers, and fathers – not kidnapped or murdered but trapped in a place like this? This place, perhaps?

"I want to go home." The words burst out of her unbidden and she immediately regretted them.

She'd been through so much already in life – Duellist Kingdom, finding out her best friend was host to a dead pharaoh, losing his soul to a ten-thousand-year-old megalomaniac, seeing people close to her hurt and scarred by magic and the destructive whims of others … It'd made her stronger, taught her the importance of friends you could really count on. At the beginning of tonight, when Jounouchi took the 'shortcut' that led to a simple stone arch, she might've been tougher about standing up to this kid. She might not be sounding like a baby who wanted her mommy while her friends were being chewed up by some monster in the dark.

Except she had spent practically a whole night running, stumbling, falling, getting up again and keeping going with her breath searing the sides of her throat. She hadn't stopped since they got out of the car and turned to find it being eaten by a planet monster. She hadn't been able to stop even when she knew her friends were being picked off, as they shouted for the others to keep going until 'the others' was just her feeling Yuugi's grip tighten as something sucked him backwards into the dark.

"I just … want to go home, with my friends. That's all I want. I want them back, I want them safe, and I want to get the hell out of here and never look back."

The boy stared at her grimy face. There were grass-stains on her jeans where she'd fallen to her knees refusing to go a step further. What was the point when she'd failed her friends – been unable to save them from this … wherever-they-were? Even though Atemu had gone to the afterlife this kind of freaky stuff still found them, but because he was gone they couldn't fight it anymore. It happened to them and they couldn't happen back and it was so frustrating and scary and … and angering.

She glared at him without wavering.

"You are not the first to say such things to me." His voice wasn't softer, but it wasn't quite so icy. "I was not trying to hurt you. If you do not wish to end up the same way your companions have then I suggest you get up and follow me. They aren't dead."

"They're not?"

"No. But unless you come with me you will not be able to save them." He offered her a hand. It was pristine. When she hesitantly put hers into it her fingers seemed like sausages that'd been dropped in dirt and trodden on. "Good."

"You're telling the truth? They're still alive? And I can save them and go home?"

"I didn't say you could go home. That will be up to Yubaba. But yes, they are alive and you can save them." He wrapped his grip around hers and helped her up.

She towered over him and felt, bizarrely, a little awkward even though he was palpably in charge of the situation. Her knees buckled a little and he didn't make any move to catch her, but his grip did constrict. For a second it was like having Yuugi back again.

"I'm Anzu."

"I will be known to you as Haku." He narrowed his eyes as if assessing her against unknown criteria. "Anzu. You remind me of someone I once knew. I hope you will be as successful as she in what you set out to do."

Fin.