Remember

Disclaimer: If I owned either of these things, I wouldn't be moving into a tiny apartment. It's recommended you listen to this song especially, just look up the link on my profile.

"I am the one star that keeps burning

So brightly it is the last light

To fade into the rising Sun

I am with you, whenever you tell my story,

For I am all I've done…"-Remember by Josh Groban

Really in all fairness, it was a perfectly reasonable and sociably acceptable reaction to a loss. No matter what one considers the relationship to be, the sadness, pain, and simple emptiness of losing a loved one, a invaluable friend. The change was felt by all, if in different ways.

Be you rival, friend, or Aibou, it was still a defining change, a cut so sharp that it separated their lives in to segments. One for before, during and after. Each had its own feel and flavor, the after almost like before but sweeter and more filling.

So everyone coped in different ways, through their own measures depending on how they viewed him and their own coping mechanisms. But they all shared in a silence, a certain skirting and awkwardness around certain subjects.

So when a pair of amethyst eyes stared vacantly out the window, those who knew remained respectful and understanding. It was going to take time, like wrapping a wound in a bandage and waiting for days before removing it to see scab forming underneath. But what they didn't know is what he was really staring at.

Almost every morning, especially the ones when he truly felt that empty hole, cold and with ragged edges that grinded against each other, he saw it, shining brightly against the sky.

A star.

It was so bright and brilliant, the way it defied even the suns mighty rays until at last the sun appeared to consume it, and it became part of the glorious brilliance that was dawn. To many it may have just seemed like a unique phenomenon, one of the wonders of natures, but to him it was something more. It was just a feeling, but after all that he had been through, one of the most fundamental rules he had learned that saved him was to listen to his feelings. Trust his intuition, his instincts, to guide him in the right direction.

It was especially comforting those first few days after, when he would wake up in the night from some twisted disturbing dream and reach for the Puzzle. Only to jerk awake when it wasn't there, or when he reached out mentally, only to flail about and find the something he was trying to grabno longer there.

It was also the same feeling he got when he was with his friends and they were reminiscing on the good old days. Duel Monsters tournaments, magic, shadows, ancients sprits (particularly him) that he felt the comforting warmth in his soul again. That empty void being filled and the ragged edges smoothed over. It wasn't just his either, as he found out later. Asking his closest friend first, his brother as a duelist, he found that they both felt it. Soon he knows it was all of them feeling it, like a trickle of hot chocolate on a cold winter's day that warms them from within. Whenever they shared all their memories, it felt like he was back real and in the flesh. From the greatest strategies, to what true courage and friendship were, how to survive a magical attack (which seemed just a plain strange thing to know, albeit useful) defying not only the darkness around but the darkness within.

It was even more pronounced to watch himself, (they… just him?) playing their favorite game, the one thing that seemed to rule their lives and destinies so much. But at times, after the talks with friends or while he sat and watched, reliving it over, and over again, the grief was overwhelming. It surged like a giant tidal wave, threatening to overwhelm and drown him. Because the removal of something precious, especially a person, was so much more complicated that any written words or movies can portray.

Anyone who knows the feeling can attest to that.

So it was when he felt like he was drowning, suffocating, that he felt it brush against the hot tears spilling down his face. It was cold, but comforting, like a wave lapping at the seashore. But what was more amazing was what he could actually hear, whether from his own memory or with his real ears, was that voice. A deep confident baritone that whispered:

Being physically alone does not mean you have been abandoned. That they have left mortal life does not mean they have left you, it is what you can see that cannot be seen, and he felt the warmth again, a burning that tingled the back of his hand , but came from the heart, unbreakable and stronger than the thickest of knotted chains.

And he would wipe away the tears and keep his promise, keep going and keep living. His story had begun, the tale had ended in light, and no matter the grief or sadness that tired to cast a pall over it, he knew it was not the end for them.

They would be friends, partners, brothers that transcended time. When the time came to meet again, both would be proud and rest in peace eternally.

It was in these quiet moments, when stories were told, hearts were healed and promises kept, that the man, standing silently in a gentle breeze that swirled his cape and the sun glinted off of gold would smile.

Thank you my friends, and thank you Aibou.

"I am the one Voice in the cold wind,

That whispers and if you listen,

You'll hear me call across the sky…

And I will never die.

Remember, I'll never leave you

As long as you hold me

In your Memories

Remember Me."

Fin.