Dedicated to Saihitei Seishuku for the wicked awesome idea. (It's called 'Illness' for a reason! =D) Sorry I couldn't reply, *shakes her fist at the internet* but I couldn't find a way around to get to you, since you disabled your PM's.
Doors. Nothing but doors. Hundreds, thousands, millions of bland grey slabs of impenetrable iron. Or perhaps, no more than one door. One constant, unchanging, unshifting door that kept realigning itself under his hand whenever he reached for another handle. At the end of every corridor, set in every stone, there was only the single door, the single room, the single answer.
Nothing.
Yami paused, his hand hovering inches away from the knob of the latest door he found himself in front of. A few torches dotted the hallway he had come from, spreading their meager lights into the inky blackness. But he knew that if he ever returned down this hall again, more than a few of the lights would have winked out, and all of the doors that he had left open to mark his progress would have once again swung shut in an effective way of confusing him. He had no means by which to mark his passage, and thus could not be certain of where in this immense labyrinth he had already ventured, and what places remained untouched.
He felt like he was walking in endless circles, the answers he was seeking kept out of his reach because he just kept trying the same path again and again.
Perhaps the other doors were nothing more than illusions. Perhaps the door he just opened was the same one he'd flung open an hour ago, the same one he'd shaken days ago, and the same one he would touch every time to come. Every time that silent portal swung forward and opened its dark mouth, it revealed only the same unchanging emptiness. Nothing new was ever discovered here. Just the same grey door and the countless, endless, twisting corridors that lead back to it.
No, he told himself, shaking his head in denial and reaching to grip the slender handle firmly. He had to believe that somewhere in this place there was something else. Something different. He had to believe that he was making progress, little by little... because he did not want to consider the implications if his assumption proved otherwise. If there truly was only one door in the depths of the Millennium Puzzle, one door and a hundred thousand different ways to get to it, then what was the point of this continued searching? What was the point of his existence inside the thing, if not to find some answers, some clues to his purpose of being here?
What reason was there for him to live?
He tugged the door open violently, a momentary surge of hope gripping him. Maybe this was it, maybe he would finally be rewarded his efforts of long and fruitless searching. Maybe there was a clue beyond this door, a single shred of hope in the hopelessness that was beginning to eat away at his resolve. Maybe...
Maybe there was just more nothing.
Yami let out his breath in a disappointed sigh, his violet eyes flicking back and forth between stone wall and blank, smooth, secret less stone wall.
Nothing.
Suddenly he felt a desperate anger welling up within him, a need to prove himself wrong and just once find something in this stupid place that would be worth the millennia of searching. He didn't like to think that all of those years had been wasted. There had to be something here!
He stepped into the room and closed his eyes, trying to see with his heart and not with his thoughts. He tried to close down on his mortal habits and stop himself from breathing. He needed no air here, he was a spirit after all, he just needed to remember to shake himself free of such things so he could concentrate.
Silence settled thick and heavy in the room. He waited patiently for many moments, trying to sublimate his anger and just focus. But time began to eat away at him again, the ever pressing knowledge that seconds were slipping past him like thieves. Unseen and undetected, but passing by nonetheless. His eyes snapped open and flared, and he sucked in a sharp breath through his nose in frustration. He walked to the wall directly across from the still open doorway and put his hands on it, willing something to come to him, some sign to manifest itself at his touch. But still the darkness and the stone reacted with the same indifference as they had for years, revealing nothing and giving him no hope that it would ever change its ways.
Yami grit his teeth and pounded his fist into the stone with a yell of pure frustration. But as the echoes of his rarely lost self-control came back to him (emphasizing the emptiness of the room in the process,) he hung his head and sighed again in shame.
"Look at me." He mumbled sarcastically to himself, thoroughly disgusted. "Yelling at inanimate objects like a spoiled child."
He shook his head with a self-degrading chuckle and turned to depart the room. He cast one last gaze at the emptiness, a look that was one part hopeful and three parts disdainful, and made to slam the door closed and satisfy some small part of himself at least.
But he couldn't resist leaving the door open a touch, just the tiniest sliver, in the hopes that he would come back one day and search this room again. A large part of his mind rebelled against the act, and indeed, he thought himself foolish for harboring these false hopes. But he still could not bring himself to fully close the door and, in his eyes at least, admit that final defeat.
A soft call wafted to his ears, carried on the mental link that was his only window to the outside world in this place.
"Yami? You've been in there all day! It's not healthy you know, you should come out and eat something before bed."
Yami felt a small smile grace his lips, easing some of the stress lines that seemed they would be forever etched into his skin. Yugi. He was always worrying about him it seemed. But truly he was grateful for the reprieve, he would welcome a break from the emptiness gladly.
He trotted down the corridor easily, already savoring the thought of getting out of here. The door lay silent and still behind him, forgotten.
And in the deepest depths of that darkened room, where only a sliver of light remained to keep away the shadows, something stirred from its slumber and opened its dark eyes.