Night Terror
By Kysra
They have grown accustomed to waking to the sound of a late night phone call or the frantic pounding of her fists at the front door. It is routine now to be pulled from sleep by the cool touch of her trembling fingers as she caresses a cheek or brushes wayward bangs from their faces. Their windows are always open to her panicked, impromptu visits. They know her need.
It confuses them, how she smiles in the day, carrying on as if she doesn't remember the choking sobs and heartbroken pleas – Don't leave me. Please, don't leave me. It is as if she doesn't remember how she comes to them in the dead of night when all is quiet and calm, can't recall the hard pace of her heart beating against theirs as they hold her close and whisper their lives into her, and won't admit to the fear that watches through her eyes, waiting to pounce into her dreams.
She has told at least one of them what drives her to seek their voices when the darkness becomes too heavy and the memories are too much to bear alone. There is a moment, when the silence is thick, that she can feel the eyes of the madmen hunting them. They hide within the shadows – shapeless and night-kissed – watching and patient to break her. Their eyes are black and cold. Their touch freezes her skin. Their presence is a curse within her house, marking her and all whom she loves. She is afraid of them. They hiss into her soul – Dead. They're dead. You live in a dream world. They're dead. She believes them, knows their mantra of hate to be true.
Then, she wakes, shaking and clawing at the air - at the ghosts inside her mind - only to find herself alone. Terror urges her to the phone, to seek the assurance of their voices; and when words are not enough, she runs to find the warmth of their skin and the solid comfort of their bodies.
And they never ask her to stop, for though they cannot stand the sight of her tears, cannot fight the source of her fear with anything but themselves, they can acknowledge – silently – that they feel a similar scare in the night, a familiar little knowledge that she may not be well or even alive. When she comes to them, their fears are put to rest until the next night when the heat of her tears and soft wind of her breath once more proves that the phantoms are wrong.
She will never know how often they wake in a cold sweat and reach for the phone but never pick it up, how many times they glance at her through the day to memorize her face, how many ways they love her, or that, when she sleeps, they cry for her too.
Owari
Author's Note: This idea has tugged at me for a long while. In my humble opinion, the kids of YGO (and make no mistake – they ARE just kids) see and experience a LOT of freaky shit. There's no way they've come out of all of that without SOME form of mental/emotional scarring.