Flawless
Miss Scarlet
Part 1: Yugi
We're a twisted bunch, aren't we? Each of us is. Flawed. Of course, everyone is flawed, aren't they? Something annoying, perhaps endearingly so, something wrong or broken or painful. A scar from the past. A bad habit, something lacking. It's inevitable, nobody's perfect. More or less.
Ah, forgive me, I'm not feeling myself tonight. The storm from this afternoon still has not let up, and the rain is beating at my window with a level of maliciousness I usually only associate with Bakura. It's so heavy, it's a wonder the sky could ever hold so much water. Sometimes when it rains like this it seeps in underneath the back door, forming a growing puddle of black water that I must mop furiously before Grandpa finds out and tries to sort everything out himself. I don't like him doing housework, not at his age. I'm not saying he's incapable, but obviously I want to protect him from harm. Screwed up though I may be, I still love my Grandpa.
Yami tells me that I'm not screwed up. Fair enough, I point out. I suppose it's perfectly normal to be communicating with a 5000 year-old Egyptian Pharaoh who just happens to reside inside your necklace? He can be easily won over, despite his 'King of Games' title. Sarcasm and a smug smile will do it every time, but then I suppose I do get special treatment.
So perhaps it's the weather that has sent me up to my room, to think. For want of anything better to do, I suppose. The puzzle is slightly warm, comfortingly so, and it's nice just to sit with it cradled between my palms, drawing in the heat and emotion from my other half. Nice isn't the word I'm looking for, but it will do. There just aren't the right words for some things, and describing our bond is one of them. I don't think I want to try. Trying to put words around our sentiments is like trapping them, encasing them in something rigid and immovable. But our relationship has been all about change, hasn't it? We've been so distant from each other, in the past. Supposing the wrong word had trapped us into that relationship? You as some psychotic possessor, a distant, superior spirit with a stern expression and your own take on what's right and wrong. myself being the meek little creature subjected to misery and control by my oppressor.
Imagine if we had stayed like that? I can feel his response to my thoughts. Sometimes we don't communicate using words. It's like we can send each other our feelings, or collections of them, little patchwork images of whatsoever we wish and to an outsider it would undoubtedly seem so random and meaningless, rather like a foreign student sitting down to his first Japanese lesson.
Right now he's telling me of secrets. He tells me what he notices in my friends, he sees them in ways I would never permit myself to. You'd be surprised. Yami tells me of warmth and love, and of course I reciprocate. And then he steels himself and shows me the troubles of my friends, of my enemies, of everyone I've ever met. He's good at reading people, I've noticed that ever since the duel with Panik, where he decided the man was a coward right from the outset and - what do you know - he was right.
Sometimes I wish Yami were wrong, but he never is. Sometimes I wish we could be nothing more than a group of happy, smiling teenagers, our only concerns being, oh, I don't know, math class and new trainers and being grounded and suchlike, where Anzu only fears running out of hair spray, where Ryou can be free from the blight he loves so dearly, where we can all be honest and open and really have nothing important to be honest and open about. Just be nice, normal, kids.
But life is the way it is, it's messed up, and each of us has our problems. And they won't ever go away. I can only sit back and watch them all, help them where I can, and think myself lucky that such an amazing group of people will allow me access to their lives. And my problems will go unmentioned, because how can I burden these struggling people with my own issues?
Heh. Yami's heard me. He sends his love. Which is all I'll ever need.
---
The first time I heard anyone say 'I love you', it came from the mouth of the most important person in the world. He was right there, right next to me, saying those words unabashedly, with a confidence and strength I could only marvel at.
He wasn't talking to me.