Author notes:
Hey, everyone! This is my first fic, so please be gentle with me. Yes, it's Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic. So, logically, it follows that I like the show. Thusly, any and all flames will be dominated by my own fiery breath, and then stomped out in an instant. Are we clear?
Good!
Disclaimer: I own no part of Yu-Gi-Oh! whatsoever. If I did, I'd have a lot more focus on the more minor characters, and more episodes on what they do in their spare time. Also, there would be more accurate inclusion of Egyptian mythology.
----
Dark.
All was dark.
Darkness was all that there had ever been, and all that ever would be.
I was trapped in this suffocating miasma of nothingness, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.
Wait... Perhaps there was something? I began to feel a strange feeling of coming together. I had never noticed that I had felt... Almost -broken-, before now. How odd.
A part of me felt as if it were very far away, but slowly coming closer. Strange...
---
A blond-haired boy is walking through the rain, soaked to the bone. In his hand, he holds a golden puzzle piece. It is absolutely priceless, irreplaceable by any means. He is heading towards a game shop, to return what was stolen by his own hands.
He exchanges a few quiet words with an old man at the door, and gives him the puzzle piece. Upstairs, a boy with strange tricolored hair is putting together a puzzle with the same type of strange, unbelievably valuable gold.
How out of place in a quiet, calm place like this. Something this valuable should be in a museum, or perhaps a private treasury, not in a plain, humble game shop. But it is, and that is what matters.
The boy putting it together seems to have a few bruises, and he flinches every now and then when moving one of his arms in a certain way, as if he had, perhaps, landed on it when falling. Which is, of course, exactly what happened.
But what matters to the boy right now is the conundrum set before him. The riddle is waiting for his ready mind to solve it, and it is getting quite impatient with him.
---
I could feel myself being pulled back together. I was being repaired after my very soul had been shattered, and cast into the darkness, as Osiris's body had been torn apart by Set and cast into the sands of Egypt.
Isis, his wife, had resurrected him by finding the pieces of his body and breathing life back into them when she had found them all. It's strange how these situations were so similar...
I wanted something. I didn't know what it was, but I craved it. I hungered for it. I thirsted for it. I knew that I wouldn't be able to continue existing without it. And yet, I didn't know what it was.
Do you know how frustrating that is? To want something so badly, to know that you will go absolutely insane if you don't get it, but not have any idea what it is? Do you know how frightening that is?
Do you?
I think not, my friend. I think not.
Nobody can understand that feeling. Well, then again, my situation was not exactly common.
I doubt that it ever will be.
Suddenly, the feeling of being brought together stopped. I knew that I was so near to what I needed, but something insignificant was holding me back. I knew, and oh, how I hated it.
A few moments passed, feeling like eternity.
Then, so suddenly, I felt it.
I was complete.
I was free.
---
The boy has all but finished it. There is only one last piece left, just waiting for him to put it in! But when he reaches into the box, where the last piece should be, he finds nothing.
He conducts a panicked but thorough search of his room, looking for that last puzzle piece. His violet eyes desperately sweep the few places that a small thing like this could be hiding, and finally he concludes that it is not there.
He is breaking down, now. Understandable, since he has been working on this puzzle for eight years. How could he have lost the last piece? And it was the piece with the eye on it, too, the one that he has always gazed upon for inspiration when about to give up on this confounded riddle!
He is crying at his desk, his large violet eyes scrunched up tightly in an attempt to keep the tears from falling. Small, choked sobs escape his tightened throat as he wallows in sorrow and self-pity.
A poignant scene.
A scene that his grandfather, the old man that spoke with the visitor that had come earlier, gleefully interrupts. He makes a show of congratulating his grandson on finishing the Millennium Puzzle, the one puzzle that has kept all in the dark as to its finished shape. Nobody has been able to come even near to completing even one corner of it, and here his grandson is, with every piece in the right place!
The boy sorrowfully tells his grandfather that he has lost the last piece, and that the puzzle will never be completed, now.
Jolly laughter bubbles up in the throat of his grandfather, and is released as he shows the boy what the blonde at the door had given to him.
The boy looks at his grandfather in shock. Surely it can't be? But it is, and he leaps at his grandfather, enveloping the man in a joyful embrace. Well, actually, it's much more like a friendly tackle.
The boy showers his grandfather in thanks for finding the puzzle piece, but the man shakes his head, and tells the boy that a friend of his had given it to him, saying that he had found it at school.
Actually, the blonde had said more than that. He had said that the boy, Yugi, had been harassed by a bully who was asking for 200,000 yen in exchange for 'protection'. In reality, this was more like paying the boy off to leave him alone, since Yugi did not consider the heckling of Jounuchi and Honda to be bullying, instead considering the rough boys his friends.
Jounuchi is the blonde who had come to the door. He had been ashamed of his actions, since Yugi had sought to protect him and his lackey, Honda, from a beat-down that would have surely come from Yugi's 'protector', Ushio.
Yugi's grandfather promptly left the room, musing on how clever his grandson was, to be able to solve the unsolvable puzzle.
The boy turns back to his puzzle, the precious piece held tightly in hand. He sits down at his desk slowly, delicately, as if moving too fast will destroy the pieces he has already put together. It is not so – they are quite secure in their shape, and will not fall apart unless he deliberately smashes it, or takes it apart.
Yugi completes it.
---
Free... I am free!