Me: Zomg, I fail at life. Honestly. Honestly. Special thanks to Kelpy for writing "Copper Penny" which really helped me write this. Really weird apprenticeshipping – MahaadoxMana.
Mana Note: I can't remember if she dies or not when fighting Zorc. In the anime, I'm pretty sure she was alive, but I think she died in the manga. This is as if she had stayed alive.
Disclaimer: Hikari Daeron does not own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any affiliations. This work was written exclusively for the aforementioned contest.
Death
Death was bright.
Death was ambiguous and grand and beautiful.
Death was also release. Death took the power inside of him and allowed it to explode.
Mahaado was dead, long dead. He'd died in the fight to save Pharaoh, the fight for the greater good and to save the world.
The High Priest had wanted death, in a sense. Because through Death, he could become Pharaoh's eternal servant. Through Death, he could clinch his Life's purpose.
But there was one thing that Mahaado hadn't taken into account when he died. That one thing came under the name of a young girl, his apprentice, Mana.
There is more than one kind of Death, and Mana experienced a different one from Mahaado.
Death revealed things that she couldn't see before. Death sat her down and had a nice long conversation about the master she once had. Death decided to knock on her door and take her to said master years later.
Mana had been young, too young to understand. She'd known all about Death, of course. As an apprentice to a High Priest, she knew the Book of the Dead forwards and backwards. She had traversed through pyramids that were being built and had seen former Pharaoh's corpse when it had been so cruelly violated.
Mahaado had been no stranger to Death. In a sense, he welcomed it when it came shaped in the form of the thief. He had smiled slightly with a nod of his head and released the power he had locked away. Because that was the right thing to do, the only thing to do.
He had never thought of the consequences, never thought of what it might due. As Pharaoh mourned his closest friend and best warrior, Mana mourned the loss of a love she never knew she had, until years later.
Years later, of course, Death came for her too.
Mahaado had died to save a kingdom and a Pharaoh. Mana had died to find him.