Xo: Yeah, this was haunting me for days, so my other updates all got put on hold (as did many hours of class lectures?) There are a lot of warnings attached to this, please read them. No teachers or friends were ignored in the making of this piece (I swear!).
Sorry about the general lack of updates- life has a terrible habit of getting in the way of things you actually want to do. That tossed in with some personal problems and an entire month can get lost into the chaos. :-/ Things will get better, so I promise updates.
Yugi is talking about the past at the same time that he's talking about the present. Keep an eye on the dates and of the events to put together what's happening to him and when.
Warnings: Trigger Warnings! Major character death, unrequited love, facing pain alone, fading away of close friendships, dying young, dying painfully, cancer, betrayal, love fails to be a deus ex machina, homosexuality (not explicit), slight loss of sanity, ect. Please read with caution.
o~o~o
"Why won't you open your eyes?" He asks me. He doesn't look at me. Won't look at me. Can't look at me. "I miss your smile."
"My eyes are open, Atem."
He walks at my side in a silence so empty that words fade away like a dying candle fire. It's as if I hadn't even opened my mouth.
"Anzu misses you."
"She only talked to me because of you."
"Jou's little sister is marrying Seto soon. They're hoping you'll make it to the wedding."
"I wouldn't miss it for the world."
Once more, we walk as if I'm not really at his side. It's a reflection of a cold reality I've come to despair over. I want to take his hand, but I know I can't. It's not mine to take.
"I owe you a lot, Yugi. Did I ever tell you that?"
I say nothing. There's nothing to say. Even I tried to find the right words, he wouldn't hear them.
"You set me free, you let me go home. Yet home was here with my friends. Thanks to you, I get to live the life that was taken from me and I get to live it with people I love."
It was selfish of me to think he'd come back for me. It was Anzu, always Anzu. It's painful to see them together, her vibrant smile and the crinkle at the edges of those crimson eyes. She's so beautiful, but oh, how he outshines her.
"I wish you could hear me, Yugi. There are so many things that I want to tell you."
"I can hear you!" I want to scream, but it comes out as a whisper. "We're bonded, even if you're free of my mental confines."
"Just, please, Yugi. Open your eyes just one more time!" He continues, my voice forgotten. Just like my memory.
"I am awake! I'm right here! Next to you! Why won't you look at me?" I demand. "Mou hitori no boku! Or is that no longer how it is?"
Oh, have I been forsaken?
He continues walking, leaving me behind as he's always done. How can I help but be in love with him?
o~o~o
I wake up with a painful gasp, my heart pounding in a dark room. The overhead window is covered in something gossamer and a thick bed of stars twinkle down at me. It's reminiscent of home.
My dream haunts me as I stare up at the night sky. No visitors, not tonight. I'm left to suffer from the fear alone. I'm scared to close my eyes, lest the dreams return. I have hours of the night left to waste with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.
It's a lonely feeling. One that I've become quite familiar with.
I don't want this. I never did. There's no history of it in my family, all my past grandfathers living well into their gray and white years. They say I'm awfully young to be in this condition and few have stood behind me throughout my trials.
My nurse is a lovely woman with wildly curly hair and a mysterious smile. She's an American doctor who moved to Japan to be with her best friend, a Japanese linguist. I teach her games while she tells me fantastical stories about life across the globe. My friends used to write letters and emails, but life gets in the way and they rarely visit.
Today is my 25th birthday. I graduated with two majors and three minors from the Domino Institute of the Arts when I was 22. Grandpa looked so proud of me. I became my own person after Atem left. My life was ready to be lived and I was ready to live it.
Anzu made it to New York, Duke in Los Angeles, Jou in Domino. Everyone was moving on, starting their own stories, growing apart. Letters were left unfinished and emails incomplete.
Then, shortly after my 23rd birthday, he showed up on my doorstep, wet, cold, and terribly alone. When word got out, everyone came flooding back to Domino City,
A week later, he was with Anzu and the pain started.
At first I thought nothing of it. It would come and go and it never rested heavily in my mind. And then it was too late. I'm always too late.
The door opens and I snap out my reverie. It's my nurse, the one with the curls.
"You look a bit pale, Mr. Mutuo." She says without preamble. "Are you feeling quite all right?"
"Yes. I just had a bad dream." I tell her. It's no use lying. She has told me once that dreams are important.
"Will you tell me about it?" She asks as she checks my vital signs and brings a light close to my eyes. She always seems to know when I'm awake late at night. The dark frown of the moon does not deter her.
"How do you know if you're in love?" I ask instead of telling her what she wants to hear. My words cause her to stop, her fingers stilling slowly.
"My dear, I don't know if I can tell you." She says softly. "Love has never been my strength."
"But you moved to Japan and left your old life behind just to be with your best friend." I counter. "That's love, isn't it?"
"I guess love is the beating of your heart and the adrenalin of knowing you're wanted; cherished, even."
"Have you ever been in love?"
"Yes. And it hurt, my sweet. Oh, God, did it hurt."
She smiles faintly before moving on.
o~o~o
I remember when they told me the news. They called me at the Game Shop during business hours, during my shift, and ruined everything. Terminal, that's the word they used. Terminal, they said, nothing they can do. Pain medication, six months, coma, imminent death, screaming agony. Nothing to do but wait for what's inevitable.
Nobody knew why I put the phone down with a muted click. Nobody asked why, for the first time in my life, I walked out on my shift. The doctor and my nurse were both sworn to secrecy as they spelled out my fate. I'm out of time.
Today, tomorrow, and the many tomorrows that follow are all lost to me. Everything collapsed in a dramatic mess. I suffered alone because life gets in the way for those that have time.
Tick-Tock. The minute hands spin and I run out of time.
I didn't tell anyone about it. I quit my job and spent hours in the library. Two weeks of medical horrors sent me sobbing to my room to hide from the monsters inside my own body. With the lights off and the door locked, I spent days crying.
Tick-tock on the clock.
Finally, after asking "why me?" and "how did this happen?", I pulled my head out of my ass. I ate my favorite foods, spent more time in the midsummer sun, and read classic literature that had happy endings for the characters that suffered.
For a while, lost on my own little island, I was happy again, if only for a short while.
Nobody knew about the fear that followed me like a second shadow or about the thing in my head that was slowly killing me. Nobody knew about the migraines. Grandpa watched me carefully while my friends moved on. The world was my silent witness.
o~o~o
I was dueling Seto in the park when it happened. One moment, I was throwing down a trap for his blue-eyes, the next, I had collapsed. I came to three days later in a public hospital with Seto sitting beside me.
"Why didn't you say anything?" He asked me.
That's when I realized that he was holding my hand, our fingers tangled together and his were shaking. "What can I do?"
"I didn't know what to tell anyone, Seto." I whispered.
And it's the first time I've ever seen him cry.
o~o~o
o~o~o
Seto let me go home with the promise that I would see him regularly. The look on his face as his car pulled away from the curb revealed what we both knew. We're friends. We're both scared.
Two weeks later, it happened again. This time I woke up in a private hospital room with Seto asleep, his hand in mine once again. His blue eyes fluttered open the second mine did. How long had he been holding a vigil at my bedside?
"They said you've got four months."
"Yes."
"Where is Atem?"
"With Anzu."
"Not with you?"
I paused. "No."
"It's time you told them."
I closed my eyes, turned my face away. "I know."
Seto helped me to my feet and back into my regular clothing. He walked by my side into the autumn weather. He didn't let go of my hand.
That night, I told everyone the truth. They proclaimed lies, a horrible joke, that I was crazy.
Seto kept his hand in mine for as long as I would need it. I never knew I would need it so much.
o~o~o
Atem stayed the night at the Game Shop for the first time in months. I returned from a hot shower to find him in the dark, sitting on my bed. He never went into my room anymore. Too many memories he didn't want to relive anymore.
"Is it all true?" He asked me as I tentatively sat beside him, the springs creaking underneath our combined weights.
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me, aibou?"
Aibou. It burns me to hear him say it. My voice betrayed my fear and also my longing for something that I'd never have. "You were never here to tell."
His eyes, those eyes that always glow with a majestic fire, snap to my face.
"It's not your fault." I told him. "Death is part of being alive."
But he wouldn't understand that. Atem has escaped death twice now. I'm not blessed the way he is and I have no one waiting for me on the other side. I'm just. . . me. Alone and doomed to someday leave this world.
"Yugi..." He turns to me and throws his arms around my neck. "Have I ever let you down?"
"Never."
Is it a lie? Maybe. But I could not hurt the man I love.
o~o~o
He was still with me when I woke up. The brown and orange leaves of autumn were drifting outside of my window and I felt an arm resting heavily over my stomach. I didn't remember falling asleep and I didn't remember him staying.
I had slept on my back, him curled by my side like a big cat with a furnace for a heart. He had thrown an arm carelessly over me as if it belonged there. As if it had a right to be there. His hot breath flared over my neck with on each exhale and he pulled me closer.
I don't know why he stayed that night, only that it felt right to me. I wished I could pretend as if this was something I'd always had. That it was me, not Anzu, who would wake to his gentle touches and baritone voice. I stayed still and watched his features as he slowly began to awaken.
For the first time, I realized that we'd become strangers.
I closed my eyes, pretended to be asleep. Dangerous words threatened to bubble out of my throat. Words like love, need, and yes.
He left me without a sound.
o~o~o
After that, everything in my life came to stuttering halt. People came to Domino only to wait in an ominous silence for me to die. They looked the other way as pain wreaked havoc on my body and on my sanity. I knew that I would rule the pain for a little while.
But the pain would rule me soon enough.
Anzu kept Atem far from me. Her eyes filled with fear whenever I came too close, almost as if she was afraid that she'd be next. That soon she'd be the one crippled by agony and bogged down by her own mortality.
Seto stood by me. He chased the others off in his own way. Jou hated him more than ever for dating his little sister and for protecting me.
Without Seto, I would have ended it all three months in advance. He kept me strong even when I felt my weakest. He supplied the morphine I sipped in disgust when the pain became too much. Whenever I passed out, he was the one that I woke up to.
"I can't keep doing this, Seto." I told him.
"I don't know if I'm ready to let you go." He knew. He always knew.
o~o~o
"Yugi, you've got a visitor." My nurse tells me. She looks upset. It must be Seto.
"Thank you."
"Are you leaving the hospital?"
"Yes."
"But-"
"No. This is my choice."
She nods. "I would do the same, if that means anything."
I smile at her. "It does. Let Seto in, okay?"
"Yugi... It's been an honor."
"Hey now, don't be sad. This is what I want."
Regardless, her eyes are sad as Seto pushes open the door and walks into the room. My nurse quickly leaves as she wipes tears from her cheeks, trying to hide her horror.
I never wanted this! This isn't the way my life is supposed to go! I fought so hard and had done so much; yet now my life, my time, is all out.
Seto can see the thoughts torturing me. He wraps me in a tight hug and I know we're both crying again. We had decided on this date weeks ago. It's time.
o~o~o
I sacrificed time to friends so that they could abandon me. Now I'll never know the feeling of wearing a ring on my left hand or of the taste of Atem's lips. I won't be Seto's best man or win another tournament. I'll never have a family of my own and I'll never know my parents. I'll never ride my nurse's horse or meet her best friend. I'll never return to the sands of Egypt.
There are so many things I'll never do.
I hate the people who left me to face this alone. I hate the fear and I hate the pain. Life isn't some fairytale where love's first kiss saves the day like deus ex machina. There's nothing that can stop what's coming.
There's no one that can save me from myself.
Seto and I stand side by side on the beach, watching the sun set. The clock hands spin and we know that time is running out.
o~o~o
I have been through so much in so little time. It's hard to remember the old me. The me that played games alone in the back of the classroom and who was obsessed with putting together a shiny golden puzzle. That was the me that fought against the darkness in Atem's heart and set him and many others free.
So I sit at my desk with the door locked and tap my pen against the thick paper. I have to get this done.
But I don't want to. I don't want this. I never did.
The paper is stained with tears. The ink blurred by the time I'm done.
o~o~o
Atem comes to see me one autumn afternoon. I have since left the game shop. The doctors had called again, the prognosis is only worse. There is no good news. Not for me. At home, Grandpa flitted around me as if he was waiting for me to die so that he could move on. Losing his son and then having the responsibility of burying his only grandson has tortured him.
I couldn't bear to add the waiting onto my own pain.
Tomorrow is the day. I can feel it in the marrow of my bones that I'm out of time. Once, it was months, but now, less than days. I don't want to spend my last moments trapped in a pain so torturous that I can't breath. My last memories would be of crushing darkness taking away all the things I love the most.
If that is the end, than I will choose my own terms.
The bottle sits as an innocent witness on my bedside table. Only Seto knows what I'm to do. He told me, at twilight on the beach weeks ago. "It is what I would do." He had said. "There's honor in it."
Now I'm residing in his house because he's the last person who understands.
Atem and I sit side by side out under the willow. I am weak, barely strong enough to stand on my own. We sit there in silence loud enough to be painful until I ask what I know he's wondering.
"Why did you come here?"
"I felt like I couldn't be anywhere else."
"And Anzu?"
"Gone for the day."
"Oh." Of course. There's nothing more to say. We sit out under the low hanging tree branches until a cold breeze kisses each of us on the cheek.
"When will I see you again?" I ask him. I know the answer. There is no next time.
He glances at me, ruby eyes bogged down in something I can't understand.
"Tonight is a cold night to be alone." He stands and helps me to my feet.
o~o~o
Shouldered with the weight of a dying heart, I rest my head in Atem's lap. I don't know how long I have before there's nothing left for me to give. There's nobody waiting for me on the other side. For once, the choice is all my own.
He holds my head in his lap and runs his fingers through my hair. He's crying.
"Don't cry, Atem." I whisper to him. "It's all going to be okay."
"How is this okay, aibou?" He demands. "You're dying."
"I made this choice. I did it for me and not for anyone else."
"You're going to leave me."
"You'd already left."
I want to tell him. I want him to know that I love him, but I can't. We can't. I won't hurt him. "Promise me, Atem. Promise you'll live for both of us. Just give me that."
"But, Yugi..."
The silence is welcome in an already quiet world.
"I've accepted this, Atem. I've done all that I had to do."
He won't let me rest. I'm so tired. "But what about all that you want?"
"I want for nothing."
Only to kiss him for the first and last time. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of his steel heart beating. I thought death would be scarier than this, but it's not so bad. Just another thing. Just another adventure. There's more on the other side, more for me to do. It can't be any more lonely than life is now.
Knowing this, I am no longer afraid of the darkness.
"I am not afraid." But Atem doesn't hear me, he's already asleep. The words slip away to nothing.
o~o~o
"He's dying, you know." Kaiba is standing in the doorway, his critical eyes watching every breath I take.
"I'm aware."
"He loves you."
I despair over the weakness of my voice. "I know."
"Why aren't you worried, Atem? He's not going to be around anymore." Kaiba is barking without actually raising his voice. I'm impressed.
"You don't understand, Kaiba. A stone heart like yours doesn't work the same way ours do."
"Oh, so a dead heart like yours knows better?" Kaiba snaps back. He knows just what to say to make my chest burn. He and I have never come to terms. Even if he and Yugi are close friends, close enough for Yugi to live under Kaiba's roof, doesn't mean I get along with him. I hate him more for appointing himself Yugi's protector when I, clearly, am the one who's supposed to take care of him. I want to rip Yugi away from him, keep him closer to myself.
It's as if Kaiba is reading my thoughts. "Yugi has never stopped taking care of your skinny little ass. Do you even know what he wants?"
"He wants to live." Obvious.
"Wrong. How could you claim to know him but be so horribly wrong?"
o~o~o
The autumn had turned cold. Cold to the bone. Or is it me that's so cold? In this waking nightmare, I can no longer tell.
"Go back to sleep, Yugi." A voice says gently.
For a moment, I wonder if this is how it's always been and that my current reality is just a freak nightmare. Maybe now it's over. But when I feel the body start to move, to escape, I open my eyes to a world I wish didn't have to be.
He's at the door; he's going to leave me to end it all alone.
"Mou hitori no boku!" I cry out, blind in my panic. He stops in the doorway, hand shaking even as he clenches it. "Please. I let you go last time but now you're just dragging it around. There are no tomorrows, mou hitori no boku. I'm all out of time."
Atem tilts his head, the flicker of a fleeting expression written on his face. I can see the light of understanding as his heavy gaze falls on the bottle.
"I need you."
He turns, eyes burning with a love I thought I'd lost.
"Aibou..."
"I don't want to be alone."
He stands, torn, in the doorway. He turns his head down and returns to me, just as he's done so many times before.
Just as he's meant to but never will. The paradox is haunting.
He slips back into the bed and pulls me close, an action reminiscent of a time that never was.
o~o~o
"It's time."
"We know."
I watch as Yugi picks up the bottle and turns it over slowly in hands, almost mesmerized. The glaze of his violet eyes betrays the pain he's been trying to ignore all this time. How did he think he could do this alone?
How did I ever think he was too weak to try?
And now I know he's strong enough to succeed. He's going to leave us all behind and go somewhere were we can't possibly follow.
"Is this goodbye, Yugi?" I ask.
He looks up. "No. This is the start of hello."
He swallows the pills dry when the clock clicks six.
o~o~o
Seto stays for a moment before placing a delicate kiss on my cheek. He whispers in my ear, where Atem cannot hear him.
"I'll miss you, Yugi."
"That's okay, you know."
"I suppose." His lips quirk into a smile that's not used to being part of his expression. "Will we meet again?"
"Naturally." Seto already understands. This last day is not his to spend; it's Atem's. Even if Atem doesn't know it.
He gets up, readies himself to leave, he doesn't want to, he doesn't want me to, but he knows, and I know. He smiles. I smile back. And all that could be said, is.
Seto walks through the door without looking back. Neither of us could stand that last glance, knowing that that memory would be the one imprinted on our minds, left to linger until we meet again on the other side. It's better this way, I tell myself. Better that I remember him strong and he remembers me brave.
Isn't that how I want to be remembered?
The pills burn as they settle, their influence strong, steady, overpowering. Atem's grip tightens as the door swings closed. It seems like a metaphor of the life I've lived.
o~o~o
"This isn't goodbye, Pharoah." I whisper into the soft leather of his sleeve. His tanned hands are resting on my chest, fingers intertwined and palms measuring the weakening beat of my heart.
"But, Yugi..."
The silence is welcome in an already quiet world.
"I've accepted this, Atem. I've done all I had to do." He won't let me rest, even as I feel the drugs take hold. If loneliness were something tangible, I would give it to him as a brand for him to wear on his skin to remind him of the emptiness of an autumn night. "In this tired world, there are people that love you."
He smiles softly. "I guess."
"I love you."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I know, little one. I'm sorry."
"Please don't cry."
"I can't stop."
"But I love you." Shouldn't he be happy?
"I don't want you to go. This world won't make sense without you." My head is back in his lap and I see fear in his eyes.
"I'm not going very far." I'm desperate to make him understand. I can't leave him without making him see what I see. "I'll be right there."
"Where's there? Why can't there be right here?"
"Here?"
"Here. Here, with me."
"Because you're not here with me."
"I love you." He says suddenly, fingers digging into my chest.
"I'm sorry."
"Never."
o~o~o
His eyes flutter closed and I wonder what I ever did wrong. I was grateful, to die before him and let him bury my memory for I could not bear to do the same for him. I want to clench his heart in my hands and force it to keep beating, but I know it's over. It's always over.
Calm amethysts open for just a second more and he smiles something sweet. Every single memory of him is in that smile and I want to remember it for as long as I can, if not forever. But I know forever doesn't work that way and the darkness has a way of eating what you wish to hold dear.
"I'll see you around, yeah?" He whispers.
"Soon." I promise.
He relaxes against me, the drugs taking away all the strength he's got left. "No. No. Take a while. You've got a life to live."
"I love you."
I don't get an answer.
"I should never have left you alone." I watch his chest rise and fall. One minute. Two. Three. Five. Ten.
Not much longer now.
o~o~o
This world is a world of color. Did you know that? The lights, the cameras, the beauty. It makes your head spin if you try to watch it too long. I didn't spend enough time stopping to smell the flowers. I didn't admire the things handed to me. The wind blew the colors by so fast that I never got a chance to see them.
But I think I did the best I could.
I'm going to miss your smile. I feel so tired, so very, very tired. The pain is gone, I feel light. Light enough to fly.
Please don't go. But it's time to go. I know it in my bones.
What a lovely world I'm leaving behind. I don't miss it. It was so lonely and the future so new. The world sinks away as I fly, fly with wings I don't have. The touch on my face grows cold.
I love you.
I never loved you.
Oh. Ohh.
What a world of loneliness this is. Of heartbreak. I don't want him to suffer any more. What a lovely world I'll leave behind. But time beckons, and I can no longer forge minutes from seconds. Tick-tock, lovely world. Tick-tock... I close my eyes and the world fades away to something deep within this heart of mine.
I'm not sorry.
o~o~o
Seto comes for him when Anzu comes for me. She takes my arm and drags me off the bed as I struggle against her, hoping that the pink in Yugi's cheeks might return. Nothing. There was nothing in a suddenly colorless world.
I was taken away while Seto brushed the cheek of the one man I never knew meant so much to so many. It seems so painfully ironic now, doesn't it?
o~o~o
Yugi never liked the rain. He would say that it reminded him of sad times that he didn't want to remember. I always saw the rain as refreshing because it washed away sorrow, but the melancholy clung to Yugi throughout the winter months until the spring sun washed it all away. Strange that the autumn lights illuminate his grave stone and the dusky leaves coat the pathway to it.
What would he say if he could see the mourners marching to the beat of the drums of autumn?
I close my eyes, let the world fall away. My mind is so cold, the oaken door of his side cracked and dusty. I wonder what I would see inside if his death allowed me to enter.
"Someone loved you." Seto says, standing next to me.
"Loved?"
"Yeah. Loved."
I open my eyes, stare at the stone with a name I can't utter written upon it. There's no color, no lights, nothing. I am a shadow of my former self.
A card appears in the dirt, I look down at it, in a dream. One of Seto's blue-eyes states up at me.
"To protect him." Seto straightens his shoulders and walks away from me. "And maybe to protect you, too."
"I don't need protecting."
"He never did, either." The cold words are tossed over his shoulder and they bite worse than any storm.
"Did I let you down?" I ask the soul of a man I never really knew.
There's no answer.
There won't ever be an answer.
o~o~o
Xo: Yeah, I'm a cruel mistress. One of these days, I will shamelessly write fluff. I swear. Hopefully. :) Angst and creepiness waaaay better suit my writing style. I love you guyyyss!
Title was adapted from a song by Eminem. I own nothing even if I wish I did. :)