WTF! Yes, it's true. More fic.
This is an out-of-the-timeline fic set in the AMSPverse, which is to say, a prequel, kind of.
Title: The Last Goodbye
Author: Nina/TechnicolorNina
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Pairing/Characters: onesided prideshipping (Atem/Kaiba).
Word Count: 1 408
Story Rating: PG/K+ for discussion of death.
Story Summary: Yuugi thought Atem should have had the chance to say goodbye. What he didn't know is that Atem did.
Notes: Wow, this thing spiraled way out of control, didn't it?
Feedback: There may be something out there that's better than a review containing concrit, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. So if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind? Please? Arigatou. (And concrit is cool. Flames are not.)
Special Thanks/Dedications: This story is for Sepsku, who beta'ed.
He hadn't expected him to be here tonight; it had been cold, close on to snowing. Not exactly park weather. And yet there he was, sitting on the covered bench by the pond, reading a book in the light from the gazebo.
Atem stopped. Yuugi's coat suddenly felt heavy on his borrowed body, his gloves clumsy. He'd come here for a specific purpose, but now he was caught halfway between indecision and cowardice.
And then, caught also in a pair of deep blue eyes.
He considered running, and decided not to. Yuugi was too easy to recognise. He could not turn back.
" . . . good evening, Kaiba," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. The eyes looking back at him were visible, but as unreadable as dolls' eyes, or eyes in a painting. Kaiba remained silent.
"I didn't mean to disturb you," Atem lied at last. He would continue on his way, pretend it was an incidental meeting, as though Yuugi always wandered around the park at night.
"You were watching me."
Atem remained impassive – poker faces were useful. Yes. It was true. He had been watching. Atem opened his mouth to lie again – of course he hadn't been staring at the back of Kaiba's head, the long neck bent as he read a book – probably something in French, given his strange love for foreign literature – and found he could not. This was it – the last time they would meet, the last time he would have the chance to say what he had spent two years vaguely thinking and a few days shy of a month knowing for certain.
The darkness allowed lies, but the moon demanded the truth.
"Yes," he admitted. Kaiba continued to look at him, neutral as ever. "You come here a great deal."
"I do."
They remained that way for a space that felt an hour, Atem standing, Kaiba still sitting on the bench. Atem saw the light glint off the cover of Kaiba's book - Les Misérables, the title read – and raised his eyes to Kaiba's again. They were not the same colour they had once been – Kaiba's eyes were darker than Set's, and overshadowed by the thick fringe he allowed to grow over them.
"Do you see something green?" Kaiba asked at last, and Atem dropped his gaze.
"I came – "
He stopped. There was something he had to say, but saying it would be somehow too final – would seal the knowledge that in all likelihood, this was it. No second chances. Kaiba continued to look at him; he might have been carved from stone.
"We're leaving for Egypt tomorrow."
As though the words were a charm, the spell was broken. Kaiba turned back to his book. "I'd heard."
"I wanted – " another pause. Looking in his eyes was too hard; looking at his back, equally torturous.
Kaiba turned again. "If it's all the same to you, I'd like to finish this chapter before I go home this evening, and I'd rather you weren't staring at the back of my head while I do it."
"I came to say goodbye."
Kaiba's eyes were still on him, unreadable as ever. "Planning on joining the crazy woman, then?"
"Ishizu has been a great help," Atem answered. "But no. I will go back where I belong, if the gods are good."
Kaiba did not answer. Atem, once the greatest, most venerated man in an entire nation, dropped his eyes once again. "I simply desired to wish you good luck."
"Why?" Kaiba's voice was strangely gentle, oddly free of scorn. Atem looked up once again and was alarmed to see Kaiba standing.
"I wasn't aware I needed a reason," he said. Kaiba let out a noise that, from someone without a pedigree a mile long, would have sounded like a snort.
"You ought to at least pretend to have one."
Atem turned his face away once again. "It's none of your care, Kaiba."
"Says the man who spent the last ten minutes staring at the back of my head," Kaiba retorted. "Get it out already."
"I already told you, it's none of your care."
Kaiba made a face that Atem suspected was calculated to strike fear into the hearts of his lesser employees. "Either spit it out or go away. I'm tired of you wasting my time." He sat back down and opened his book. Atem saw the glint of a booster-pack wrapper, and then the makeshift bookmark was tucked back into the front of the book.
"I didn't come here to share my reasons with you, Seto-kun. I've already said what I had to say." He realised halfway through the second sentence what he'd let slip, but there was no changing it.
Kaiba's head jerked up from his book. "Excuse me?"
This time Atem would not let his eyes fall from Kaiba's face. "I knew you once by a title very like that name."
Kaiba turned back to his book. Well, there was an end to that conversation.
"Deny it all you like. I know it to be true."
"Hnn."
Atem's restraint finally broke. "You're being incredibly rude to a man who expects to be dead by this weekend, you know."
Kaiba did not look up from his book. "Are you suicidal, or just incredibly melodramatic?"
"I speak only the truth, and you know it to be so," Atem answered, brushing Yuugi's fringe impatiently out of his face. "I've come too far for lies – Seto."
Kaiba looked up one last time, clearly annoyed, and opened his mouth to speak. Atem cut him off.
"This is quite likely the last time we'll meet," he said. "I'd like two minutes of your time in which you'd kindly stop sniping at me, or ignoring me, and allow me to speak."
Kaiba shut his book on his finger and looked up. Atem counted it a point in his favour that Kaiba did not look at his wristwatch. "Talk."
"I simply wished to tell you that I appreciate all you've done to help me, whether you intended it to be so or not," Atem said. Anger – or, at least, mild pique – made it easier to speak, somehow. "And that I'll continue to hold you close to my heart."
"Hnn."
Atem decided that was supposed to be his sign that Kaiba was still listening. "Best of luck in all things." He finished up with a curt nod, and turned away once again. "May you find whatever happiness it is you seek." He would not look back. That, he had found, was the easiest way.
"Why did you call me that?"
He turned around, in spite of all vows to the contrary. Kaiba was still sitting on the bench, but now he was leaning forward, his hands – one of them still holding the book – dangling between his knees. It was not a pose he was used to associating with Kaiba.
"Pardon?"
"Nobody uses my given name," Kaiba answered. "Not even Mokuba. Why did you?"
Atem made a gesture very like an invisible shrug. "I prefer it to the alternative." He turned away again. "I should go." I should never have come.
A hand landed on his shoulder. He stopped – could not have continued for worlds – but did not turn around.
"Good luck to you, too. Whatever it is you're doing."
Atem smiled, still facing away. "Thank you."
The hand squeezed his shoulder, then fell away. "I should get home. It's almost Mokuba's bedtime."
Atem nodded. "You should go." He headed for the west entrance of the park, the one closest to home.
"Hey!"
Atem turned, one last time, wondering if Kaiba knew how difficult he was making this.
"What is your name, anyway?"
Atem spoke it. He expected Kaiba's returning conformation to have that little Japanese twist he'd come to expect from Yuugi's friends - Atemu - but it did not. And more – the missing vowels, the ones that made it impossible for even the best of archaeologists to know exactly how that long-dead language had sounded, were back in their rightful place. He wondered if Kaiba had noticed. He suspected not.
" . . . if you can duel your way into wherever you're going . . . you'll succeed. Atem."
He smiled one last time. "I appreciate your vote of confidence."
It was Kaiba who turned and walked away into the March wind and snow without looking back.
Somehow, Atem knew, it was how it should be.