The Yu-Gi-Oh! Fanfiction Contest

Round 2 - Supportshipping (Anzu x Honda)

Summary: Post-series. Anzu's friends have always been the ones who made her strong.

Warning: Hints of Anzu x Yugi and Anzu x Yami.

Subadjacency

The third-to-last person in the world Anzu wanted to see was standing on her porch, propping open the screen with his shoulder and a sheepish smile on his face. Through the open door, chilly November wind brushed against her legs, and the dark sky outside threatened imminent rain.

The second-to-last person in the world would have been Jounouchi. Last was Yugi. And third-to-last was...

"Hello, Honda-kun," Anzu said helplessly. It would be rude to close the door on him at this point, wouldn't it. "I guess you aren't here to see my mom?"

"Nope," Honda said. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.

Anzu's expression must have revealed too much, or maybe she just hesitated too long before opening the door the rest of the way, because then his voice turned wheedling. "Aw, Anzu, you wouldn't make me walk all the way home in a thunderstorm..."

"I guess not," she sighed, pulling the door back.

"You should be glad it's just me and not Jounouchi," Honda said while he was taking off his shoes. "He would've been louder about it."

"Yeah, I know," Anzu said.

Honda and Jounouchi were around each other so often that she rarely had opportunities to appreciate how much quieter Honda was alone. "Did you talk him out of it?"

"Nah, he still has classes this week. I thought it might be better if I got to you first."

"Oh," Anzu said, surprised.

"I brought food, too." He held up a paper bag, grinning.

"Now I know it's going to be bad," Anzu said dryly, but she took the bag anyway, "if you felt the need to bribe me."

"Hey, it's a guest's gift!" Honda said. "We haven't seen you in so long, I thought I should bring one—"

"Shut up." Anzu laughed and hit his shoulder, the awkwardness of their reunion dissipating. Then it was just Anzu and Honda, the way they'd been with Yugi in high school, easy banter and catching up as she took out Honda's guest gift (cookies from that bakery downtown they used to eat at) and set it down on the coffee table.

It felt almost like the old days. They sat down on opposite sides of the table, legs folded casually to the side, like the old friends they were. They were discussing Honda's economics professor—"He likes using his job as an excuse to make us listen to his conspiracy theories, you wouldn't believe some of the things he's said"—and carefully avoiding any mention of Yugi, which Anzu was grateful for, when it started raining outside.

"Ah, crap," Honda said, glancing at the window. "I told Jounouchi that I'd be at his place by three."

The raindrops fell louder, and Anzu got up to close the window, using the excuse of wiping water from the pane to look away longer. She knew what was coming next. "Text him," she suggested. She wanted to ask about Shizuka, as a distraction, but she didn't know if they'd broken up since she left Domino and she didn't want to ruin the careful lightheartedness she and Honda had been keeping up until then.

"Yeah," Honda said. Keys tapped behind her. Anzu pressed her fingertips to the glass and waited until the misty imprints faded before turning around.

The storm had made it dark enough that she had a little trouble making her way back to the table, but she didn't turn on the light. She could see Honda's expression (newly serious) well enough.

"So," he said, and both of them knew what he was talking about, "what happened?"

Three years ago, Honda wouldn't have been mature enough for this conversation. Three years ago, he and Jounouchi were still those lovable idiots Anzu remembered so well, and all of them were scrambling to figure out their lives after Other Yugi had left.

Or rather, Honda and Jounouchi and Yugi were going on with their lives more or less as usual, and Anzu was struggling alone. Thinking about it, she didn't even remember the problems that plagued her at that time, except that some of it had been the knowledge that she would have to go far away for dance school and some of it had been a continuation of her torn feelings between Yugi and Atem and some of was just the shock of suddenly being in a world without the magic and excitement that Other Yugi had brought with him.

So maybe she'd loved Other Yugi—not necessarily more than she loved Yugi, but in an entirely different way, one that she managed to avoid coming to terms with until the spring before she and her friends headed off to college. She'd loved Other Yugi more selfishly than she thought she could ever love anyone, until she realized she'd loved Yugi even more selfishly. And with that guilt weighing her down whenever she talked to him, what could she do but escape to a college on the other side of Japan?

It was a story that was so complicated with emotion that when Honda asked her what had happened, she hesitated both because she didn't want to answer and because she didn't know how. Honda waited on the other side of the table, the bag of cookies he'd brought untouched, while the sound of rain filled the space between them. Before, he would have gotten impatient at this point and left, rain or not. But he didn't, because both of them had grown up, and there was a quiet sadness in knowing that she hadn't been there for it.

"I mean, I get that your dance school was really far away and everything," Honda was saying. She could barely see his face in the shadows, but she could imagine the earnest bemusement that would be onit. "But you could've visited on breaks, at least."

"I am on break," Anzu said, smiling a little.

"I meant all the other breaks—"

"I got a scholarship," Anzu said, the news that she'd been holding in for her whole stay at Domino spilling out without her intention. "To go to dance school. In America."

"Wow," Honda said, and she would have been more insulted at his surprise if she hadn't personally known how well she'd kept her life separate from them.

"I don't know if I'm going to go," she said before he could congratulate her. She couldn't stop herself from saying it, because it was such a relief to get it out in the open. "I don't know if I want to."

An explanation would have been too hard to formulate, and also a lot of emotional baggage to dump on a friend you hadn't seen for years. That was why she just shrugged when Honda said, "I don't get it."

It would've been unspeakable three years ago—Mazaki Anzu, tired of dancing? Well, that was it, about as succinctly as she could put it.

"Come on, Anzu," Honda said, when she didn't give him another answer. "Way to leave me hanging."

"I can't explain," she said. She had explained once, because to apply to school in America you needed to write essays, and she'd written about that. "It's like... dance itself is great, but there are people you meet when you do it, who wouldn't care if you pulled a muscle or got sick right before tryouts for the winter show, and would probably be happy if you did, if they even considered you competition in the first place..." She trailed off. In her essays, she'd used phrases like "petty school politics" and "detract from the purity of dance," but they were empty phrases, because that wasn't it.

What it was was that Anzu had gone to school to dance and to escape, because dance was always how she'd escaped before, but instead she'd found a university of people capable of cold, calculated cruelty that she had never known in Domino. A world full of hardness and corruption, beyond the pettiness she'd told Honda about. And, living in the midst of this world, she'd become a girl capable of that kind of cruelty, until Yugi-tachi seemed like people whose friendship she no longer deserved. Anzu had spent her whole life searching for magic, but after she left Domino there was no magic remaining.

Maybe it was silly to want people to be kind and the world to be beautiful. Maybe it was naïve. But even as a teenager who wasn't sure what she wanted, Anzu understood herself well enough to know that she would be happier in Domino.

Anzu didn't even know what she'd been saying, but judging from Honda's expression, it probably hadn't been very coherent. He didn't ask, though. Instead, he just said, "It's okay, Anzu," and put a hand on her arm.

God. "You've grown up, Honda-kun," she said, trying for lightheartedness, but it was too true to be that funny. He'd grown out of shifting away whenever they accidentally touched, and grown up enough that she knew that he and Jounouchi and Yugi would take her back, even if she was a horrible person, even if they didn't understand. They'd changed too, after all.

"I know," Honda said. "Are you going to see Jou and Yugi, then? Now that we're all mature and stuff."

"It's raining," Anzu said, but she was smiling.

"You can come over when it clears up," said Honda.

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the end

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A/N: Subadjacent support is "the right of the land to be supported by the land which lies under it" (US Legal).

There was going to be an explanation that a big part of Honda's maturity is that he and Shizuka dated for a few years, and he broke up with her because he realized they weren't going to work in the long run, but time constraints.

Please review/give criticism! :)