Shadow: If I don't type something other than 'With a Wave of the Wand', it'll fry my brain. (Sounds of brain frying.)This is kind of a release from WAWOTW, and the plot differs completely (hopefully). Yugi-tachi are all generally the ages they are in the anime, and Bakura and Yami are out of their items, with their own corporeal forms. I always make Yami a little older than Yugi (and Bakura a little older than Ryou), so Yugi's sixteen, and Yami's seventeen (same goes for the albinos). Hope you enjoy this, and if you're a fan of my other fics, please don't kill me (chibi eyes) as I promise I'll work on them…
Summary:
What if everything you believed in… every moment you experienced… and every memory you hold dear… never happened? Yami Mouto wakes up in a hospital in London, after recovering from a two year coma. Memories are fresh in his mind after his sleep, yet it seems that nothing he remembers holds any truth in the life he's woken up into. Determined to prove he's not mad, he sets out seeking answers, searching for his friends, his family, and his life.
There's only one thing worse than finding out you're crazy…
And that's finding out you're not.
Notes:
(Blah.) – Yugi to Yami
/Blah./ - Yami to Yugi
Blah – Character's individual thoughts
Meltdown
Chapter 1: Where am I?
"Yugi, no! Run!"
"Yami, no, I can't, I won't-"
And then the pharaoh was pushing his hikari away, pushing him out of the door, the power of the Shadows still strong, strong at the time he needed it the most. But Yugi was fighting, not wanting to leave his darker half behind. Yet the energy behind him was building, drowning out his little light's voice, and Yugi realised, speaking – pleading - in the pharaoh's mind.
(Yami, please! Come with me, you still can and-)
/No, aibou… I must stay here…/
(Yami-!)
And then Yugi was cut off, the energy wave building and crackling and finally releasing in an immense, powerful wave, blasting all that stood in it's path. And Yami blasted the Shadows straight back at it, dark meeting light in an earth-shattering boom, and the pharaoh was flung back, the puzzle shining bright around his neck, and then-
And then…
…
Only dark.
"Yami? Yami, honey? Can you hear me?"
The voice registered in Yami's thoughts, lifting the black veil hanging over his mind.
"Yami? Yami, baby. Come on sweetie. I'm here. Your mommy's here." It was a woman's voice, soft and sweet, sounding close to tears. "Wake up, honey. Wake up."
I don't know who you are lady, but you're not my 'mommy'.
Yami's eyes flickered, on the verge of opening.
The woman saw. "That's it, baby, wake up. I'm here, darling, I'm here."
Baby? Darling? Lady, you need to see a doctor.
Another voice spoke, a male's this time. "That's it son, just keep listening to your mother. Wake up."
Son!
"Come back to us, sweetie."
Yami groaned, and his eyes opened. "Where am I?"
He seemed to be lying on a bed, wrapped up in stiff white sheets that crinkled as he moved. A strange machine bleeped at his side, a blue line running across a screen, punctuated every so often by a jagged hill. It was connected to him by a wire… which was pinned to his head. There were tubes in his arms…and there was a drip beside the bed…
The teen yelped. "I'm in a hospital!"
Suddenly, a light was shone directly in his eyes, and a voice spoke. "Can you tell me your name?"
Yami tried to swat the light away. "I- stop it! Why the hell are you-!"
The voice spoke again. "Please, just relax. I'm a doctor. I need you to answer my questions."
Sighing, the teen complied. "My name is Yami. Yami Mouto."
"And your age…?"
"Seventeen."
The light flicked off. Yami blinked, trying to clear his vision from dancing blue spots. He rubbed his eyes, and suddenly noticed the other people in the room. There were two men and a woman, huddled at the side of his bed, all strangers to him.
One of the men was wearing a white coat – Yami presumed he was the doctor with the annoying light – and he was talking to the other two people, who were obviously a married couple. The man had his arm around the lady, and she cuddled into his grip, smiling nervously at the doctor. She was a pretty woman with long black hair and almond eyes, late thirties at the most. The man beside her couldn't have been much older, his face still classically handsome, his brown eyes serious as he listened to the doctor. It must have been their voices he's heard… The both looked like nice, friendly people, but their faces seemed to say that they hadn't had a lot to be happy about for some time. But the woman… she looked wildly ecstatic about something… and she kept shooting glances at Yami…
The three came over to the bed. The woman smiled tremblingly at him, and Yami's confusion deepened. Who was she?
The doctor had materialised a clip board from somewhere. "Yami, can you tell me what year it is?"
"2005."
The doctor nodded slightly, and made a mark on his clipboard. "And the date…?"
"August 17th."
"Hmm…" Another note. "Yami, do you know why you're in this hospital?"
"No."
The doctor sighed. "Yami, you've been in a coma for two years. You were right about the year – it is 2005 – but it's not August 17th. In fact, it's March 2nd."
"That's impossible."
"And why would that be?" A clinical eye surveyed him.
"I can't have been in a coma for two years, I was- I haven't – Yugi was – I can't!" Yami's voice rose slightly. I haven't been out of the puzzle two years, so how could I have been in a coma!
"Yugi? Who is this Yugi?"
"He's my brother." At least that's what we told the authorities…
The woman squeaked quietly, and buried her face in her husband's chest. The man shushed her, his eyes fixed on Yami's.
The doctor made another note. "Can you tell me about Yugi?"
The teen frowned, a foreboding feeling beginning in his mind. "What do you want to know?"
"I don't know. Tell me about him."
"He's my little brother. He's sixteen, almost exactly a year younger than me. He looks a lot like me, except he's got purple eyes and he's shorter than me. Where is he? It's unlike him not being here…"
The doctor frowned slightly, looking at Yami over the top of his clipboard. "What about the rest of your family?"
"My parents are dead and I live with Yugi and our grandpa."
The woman wailed quietly. Again, the man shushed her.
Yami looked at her curiously. "Is she alright?"
The doctor's face was serious. "It's not her I'm worried about. Yami… your parents aren't dead."
The teen's face was blank. "I know they're dead."
The woman wailed even louder, and this time her husband didn't try to stop her. His eyes fixed on Yami, a quiet sadness reflecting in their depths.
"Yami, they can't possibly be dead."
Yami felt a spark of aggressiveness light within him. He knew his and Yugi's parents were dead. "And why's that?"
The doctor fixed Yami in his gaze again, like he would a dead frog under a microscope, intense and unwavering. He motioned the room's other two occupants forward, the woman's face wet with tears, and the man's grimly dry.
The doctor hesitated for a moment, and then spoke. "Yami, these are your parents."
The woman looked up, "Sweetie…" She stepped towards Yami, her hand extended towards the teen's face.
Yami recoiled. "Who are you? Lady, you're not my mother!"
The woman let out a choked sob, her hand falling to her side. The man tried. "Son…"
Yami moved even further away. "And you're not my father! Where's Yugi?"
The doctor was furiously scribbling on his board. He paused for a moment, and spoke to his patient. "Yami, you're hurting your parents."
"They're not my parents! My parents are dead! Dead! These… these people, they're strangers to me! Where's Yugi?"
The doctor made a few more notes.
The woman was sobbing openly. "Yami, baby, why are you doing this? What did we do to you to deserve this? Sweetheart…"
Yami only pulled further away from her.
The doctor tried to comfort the woman. "Mrs. Mouto, Yami doesn't mean to hurt you. I think your son's suffering from psychosis; his mind seems to have fabricated a new life for him to cope with the accident, and his resulting coma. It does happen with coma patients, and most quickly recover and go back to their normal lives. What your son says may be hurtful, but he doesn't really mean it. Deep down inside of him, I'm sure at some level of his consciousness he recognises you. He just needs your love and support, and to know you'll be there for him."
Psychosis! Yami let out a yell. "I'm not mad!"
The woman smiled again, swallowing her tears. "Of course you're not, honey, it's just… you're a little…confused at the moment. It'll be alright soon though… the doctors will help you…"
Yami's voice was cold as he spoke to her. "Woman, get this through your skull, you are not my mother, I am not your honey, and don't you ever think that."
The woman hiccupped. "Baby…"
"I'm not your son!" Yami was yelling again, anger flaring inside him. "You're not my parents and you never will be! Where's Yugi? Where are my friends? What have you done to them!" he tried to get out of bed, but the doctor was there, restraining him, yelling for a nurse and sedatives. And then there was another woman there, dressed in blue, a needle in her hand... And she was putting something in his drip, and his mind was going fuzzy, and it was hard to think, and the couple were hugging again, the woman distraught, crying, and the man comforting her, and his mind… and the room… it was swimming now… circles and circles and circles… and then the woman was leaning over him, her husband at her side… whispering to him… "Sweetie…"
And the doctor muttering in the background… "A clear case of psychosis if ever I saw one…"
And nothing was clear any more… it was so hazy… so hard to think….only one thing really clear to him….
I'm not mad.
Shadow: Gah. My facts are probably all wrong, but hey… I'm not a doctor. I hate hospitals… does it show? And those little light things… They are really annoying if they get shone in your eyes, especially if you're still woozy after anaesthetic. (Trust me; I have experience on that one.)Gah. My facts are probably wrong, but hey… I'm not a doctor. I hospitals… does it show? And those little light things… They are annoying if they get shone in your eyes, especially if you're still woozy after anaesthetic. (Trust me; I have experience on that one.)
Well… off I go to commit brain suicide with WAWOTW writer's block. (Le sigh.) Fuuuun.
