Ashes doesn't own Yu-Gi-Oh.
Breath. The rush of air from the open window, the feeling of it – cold and raising goosebumps on his arms. He breathed deep, taking in the scent. Immediately his nose crinkled, his mind reeled and he pushed himself back in the wooden chair he was seated in, looking around the room that felt too familiar to be so new to him. The sound the chair made against the floor grated against his senses, a scrape and a creak and a groan all at once.
It did not smell… right. But he couldn't define what right was; he searched himself as much as he could, but 'right' didn't have an image attached. It just smelled wrong.
Another deep breath, filling his lungs with chilled air – that felt right, felt wonderful, like he hadn't done it forever. His eyes roamed down, down to the trinket in his hands. The Puzzle. The Millennium Puzzle – it burnt bright in his mind, like a symbol of something he should have known. All he could remember when he looked at it was a darkness, a vague feeling of hurt…
He blinked, took another breath – emotions and ideas and needs and wants all came tumbling into his head at once – and then it all stopped, and his eyes opened wide.
Protect yourself.
It burnt in his mind, and he nodded wordlessly. It was instinctive. He wasn't really aware of himself – just what was he protecting? He looked around, looked up and saw himself in the ceiling. A window, he knew, but he didn't know why he knew it. It didn't look like something he had seen before.
No matter how much he stared, he knew it wasn't right. That wasn't him. But a new thought jumped to the forefront of his mind, stronger than the previous one, more important.
Protect him.
-end-
notes
I wrote this forever ago, trying to get this grasp of what it would be like for Atemu to wake up for the first time in thousands of years and try to get a feel for it. I want it to be this kind of thing where he came to realize it was temporary, but I never felt like it worked. So I looked at it tonight and said, "Huh. It's already said everything it needs to say."
I ran through it several times, but I don't have a beta because I dumped fandom a while ago. I'm like fandom's ex-girlfriend who just keeps coming back for sex. It's very confusing for both of us. So all errors are completely my own fault.