Notes: This is the result of a very long discussion between myself and my partner in crime over on LJ. We were attempting to sort through Ryo and Fubuki's history together and how two guys as different as they are became friends (we settled on "knew each other since childhood.") The whole thing eventually turned into a massive discussion about Ryo and Sho and their estrangement, which in turn spawned this.

i

Sho can't really remember it that clearly. In the end, he probably wasn't any more than five or six when it happened. But he remembers Ryo standing by the door with a little backpack (the one he always took when he sometimes stayed overnight at Fubuki-kun's house.) Quiet as always and maybe a little bit (unusually) pensive. Not even shying away (like he'd been starting to) when their mother hugged him tight and pressed a kiss against his forehead. Telling him over and over how proud she was, and how he was going to do so well, and what an honour it was for him to even be able to go...

Sho just stood there. Peeking around the doorframe (thumb instinctively finding its way into his mouth, despite the fact that he'd outgrown the habit a while ago) and watching the whole display with wide eyes until their father finally noticed Sho's presence and told him to come say goodbye to Ryo.

"Your big brother is going to go away for a while. A whole year. Maybe a little more if he's lucky."

Sho can't remember if much else was said after that. He knows the concept had been too much for him to wrap his mind around at the time. Back then, a year might as well have been forever. And for Ryo to not be around for that long...

"I wanna go too," he had said. All wide, pleading, eyes and their parents had offered up reassuring smiles. Insisting that Ryo would be back home in no time and how it was Very Important that he go on this trip.

Sho didn't care about that, though. He just wanted to go along. Entirely unable (unwilling) to even attempt to understand why Ryo was the only one who could go. Sho sobbing until he almost made himself ill when the door closed behind Ryo and their father.

That night he tried to run away, intent on being wherever Ryo was and he made it as far as the Tenjoin's doorstep (three houses down) before dissolving into a terrified mess. Thankful when someone answered his frightened pounding on the door and the only other thing he remembers about that night is sitting in the Tenjoin's brightly lit kitchen with a plate of cookies. Fubuki-kun asking him if he wanted to duel while the low, concerned, murmur of adult voices drifted in from the next room.

ii

Getting into a junior high should not have been as stressful as it was.

Except, Sho had high aspirations. High aspirations in the form of a seemingly perfect elder brother and he wanted to prove himself so badly that it made his chest tighten up and ache every time he thought about it. Studying for entrance exams far into the night, until his eyes itched and burned and more than once he would wake up in the morning, still sitting at his desk. Some dueling problem or another spread out before him and sometimes there would be a slight groove cut into his cheek from resting against a card.

It wasn't simply that he wanted to get into the same prep school that Ryo was in (and about to enter his final year of.) It was that he needed to. Needed everyone (but most of all Ryo) to see that he could be something more than a tag-along.

The day the results came back, he could barely breathe. Ice lodging in his chest as it sunk in that he hadn't made the cut. That once again (and always) Ryo was simply in a place that he couldn't reach. Couldn't follow.

Couldn't and would never be able to. Because even if he tried again next year (as his mother suggested with reassuring hand on his shoulder) Ryo wouldn't be there anymore. Moved onwards and upwards to high school.

To Duel Academia.

And Sho knew he couldn't afford to dwell. That he simply had to readjust his sights that one further step ahead.

iii

When Sho (just barely) passed the practical portion of Duel Academia's entrance exams, he was damn near flying. Heart thundering wildly in his chest and there was a wild little part of him that wanted to jump up and down. To run into the streets and scream out his joy.

He didn't though, because Ryo was right there, watching silently with Asuka right beside him. The pair of them decked out in blue and white like shining examples of everything that Sho wanted so badly to be.

When Asuka congratulated him (with a warm smile and a friendly little punch on the shoulder) he blushed. Bright red, and found himself completely unable to meet her eyes (hasn't really been able to since their last year of middle school when he realized that girls weren't really all that gross and it only got worse as the years past and she started getting curvy in all those mysterious female spots --almost thankful that he didn't get into the same junior high school as she did... almost)

Ryo, on the other hand, didn't smile. Just gave the barest of nods that might have been approval, although there was a part of Sho that doubted this. And even when he murmured, "Congratulations," it seemed so absent and almost forced that Sho knew the emotion wasn't there.

It made him want to scream for an entirely different reason.

iv

Sho watches all of his brother's pro league duels with a sort of horrified fascination, no matter how many times he insists that he doesn't want to see them at all. Recording them all too (although nobody knows about that part, not even Judai) and he sometimes sits up at night. Watching over and over again.

It's all so very strange, because the little nuances (the stance, the set of his shoulders, the slight tilt of his head) all belong to the brother he knows so well. The one Sho has trailed after and attempted to follow everywhere for as long as he can remember. But in the close ups there is this frightening light in those eyes (flat and dead, but a little wild too) a bitter, angry, twist to that mouth that makes Sho shudder a little at the sight. A twisted up vicious creature that Sho wants to decry as simply Not Ryo.

Except it is. It is, and it isn't, and in the end it terrifies him.

Because he doesn't want this to be the ideal that he's chasing anymore.