Prologue
Sometimes it feels as if your attention has wandered for just an instant. You are standing outside, and on the edge of the horizon the sun is just beginning to rise. There's just enough light to illuminate the sketch on the scroll you hold unfolded before you, a dramatic break of black angles against dry golden papyrus. There's a shimmer as the tentative heat of the early morning meets the deep cold of the night. The paper drops, rustling like sand in an overturned hourglass, and suddenly you are standing in a room familiar and unfamiliar all at once, standing at the foot of the bed of a young boy who both is and is not you.
He sits up and grins at you even as he rubs his eyes sleepily. He asks if he would like some hot chocolate. You nod and the two of you go into the kitchen. Yugi is generous with the amount of cocoa he spoons into the bottom of your glasses, and his bare feet pad softly against the hard tiles of the kitchen floor as he brings them to the breakfast table where you are sitting. The bright green numbers of the microwave clock glow 3:28, then 3:29, and just as suddenly you are back in your present. The feeling of warmth as you held the mug between your hands fades and you shiver even as the bright desert sun blazes up over the horizon before you.
Sometimes you feel as though you have stood up took quickly even if you are lying in bed half asleep. Blood rushes in your head and when you open your eyes you are lying in a park with the wind knocked out of you. You can feel every single blade of grass against the back of your arms and neck. You are exhausted and breathless. Yugi is kneeling beside you, worried, but his face seems far away, like the copy of a copy, faded out. You close your eyes as and even as he reaches for your hand you don't expect to feel his touch.
Sometimes you feel euphoric. Everything has an aura, and it's like looking through a kaleidoscope. You don't know when you'll go or why. You can only wait as the world around you swirls as the universe expands and shifts until all paths overlap and everything settles into the shape it remembers.
The lines Sometimes it feels as if your attention has wandered for just an instant, Sometimes you feel as though you have stood up took quickly even if you are lying in bed half asleep, Sometimes you feel euphoric and the general premise of Atem's time traveling are taken from Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Basically, Atem involuntarily finds himself time traveling to Yugi's present for short periods. I'm writing this without too much editing or even an outline in mind, so be prepared for awkward pacing and questionable set ups and even more general confusion.
