Author's Note: Been a while since I wrote a YGO fic. Contains one-sided revolutionshipping, currently one-sided peachshipping, and implied vaseshipping. Based most of this off the manga (the scene in the Memory World is the most telling). I use the English names because I like them. I don't hate the dub and I'm not ashamed of it.

Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh is owned by Kazuki Takahashi. I'm experimenting with a concept I've had for a while now.

Brown and Bluish

There was a reason.

There was a reason that Yami felt comfortable talking to Téa about his concerns for the future and his worries about Yugi, all things he was hesitant (if not downright reluctant) to share with the boy whose body he borrowed.

There was a reason, and he was starting to think it had nothing to do with Yugi's feelings for Téa bleeding through their bond.

In the early days of his awakening, he was certain that was the case when Téa was taken hostage at Burger World and put into danger the very first time after Yugi had solved the Puzzle. Back then, he hadn't even really known where he began and Yugi ended and he'd made Yugi's fear and feelings into his own without realizing it. All he could remember from back then was seeing the brown and the bluish colors, then feeling terror followed by rage and a distinct sense of possessiveness.

There was a reason, and he didn't think it was because he might be developing feelings for the girl as well. Heh, as if Yugi needed any more complications going on in his life without adding 'lovestruck ghost' to the mix. Téa was kind, optimistic, and supportive and she was a good friend, but that was as far as his feelings for her went. He felt comfortable with her and he felt like he could open up to her about his hidden insecurities. She made it okay for him to feel weak.

More than making him feel better, it felt familiar.

Familiar the way that Duel Monsters and the shadow games he played were familiar. Familiar in the sense of his having gone through the motions before. Ishizu and the tablet he'd seen at the museum had proved that; he was a Pharaoh from 3000 years ago and had participated in the shadow games and fought using the real Duel Monsters that were summoned from stone tablets instead of cards.

And so Yami wondered if he had done this before too.

He wondered if there was someone in his past that he used to open up to just like this.

Maybe another girl with brown hair and bluish eyes.

()()()()()

The Pharaoh was in the throne room with Seto standing before the new tablet bearing witness to Mahad's sacrifice when he heard a commotion just beyond the room. A girl about his age was trying to force her way past the guards to get in. A girl with brown hair and greenish-blue eyes and when his met hers, his breath caught in his throat and his eyes widened. He knew her. The whirling, stirring emotions like Yugi's for Téa, but far older and more tender than he'd felt or remembered, the admissions of weakness and unconditional acceptance, and the familiar brown and bluish colors he'd never completely forgotten. As he stared, a name he'd never heard before came to him from the hidden recesses of his mind. Mana. A name that he instantly knew with certainty belonged to her. He breathed her name aloud and affection and longing coursed through his heart in response. After all the time he'd spent trapped in darkness, lost and alone and going insane, and this girl's name was as precious to him as his own must have once been.

"It's okay! Let her through!" he ordered.

The guards moved aside to let her pass and he watched her approach Mahad's tablet. He could see the shock and disbelief warring in those bluish eyes and when she finally stopped in front of the tablet, the Pharaoh was certain. There was no doubt in his heart that he'd loved this girl while he lived. She was his Téa. Or rather, she was the girl that Téa had reminded him of.

()()()()()

"My name is Atem!"

The Eye of Wadjet glowed and split in half, the doors to the Afterlife opening up to allow him entry. This was it. He had reclaimed his name and his memories. His journey through the Duat began the moment Yugi freed him from the Millennium Puzzle and he had passed the Weighing of the Heart Ceremony, his first and last duel with Yugi. After 3000 years, he could finally enter the Fields of Aaru where he belonged and join the family and friends he'd left behind too early. Atem started walking into the light, determined not to look back.

"Yugi!"

The voices of his friends halted him in his tracks.

"Are you really… going to go…" It was Tristan who spoke. "You don't really have to go to the Afterlife, do you?! I mean, d-don't leave us!" Atem felt his heart clench. Tristan and Joey were of a similar mold; neither of them liked showing weakness and yet, here he was crying- sobbing if he wanted to be accurate. All of them were and all because of him. Because he was leaving them.

"Other Yugi. I mean, Atem," Téa said quietly. He closed his eyes tight and kept facing away. "You need to go to the other side of that light. I know that, but… once you go through, you can never come back! Why? I don't get it! We've been friends for so long, now all of a sudden… you're going to leave?! I just don't get it!"

Atem couldn't look at her. He knew her feelings for him, but he couldn't return them like she wanted and he didn't want to give her any false reason to try and go through this door with him. She belonged with the living and he belonged with the dead. With the return of his memories, he knew even more than he did while playing the shadow RPG with Bakura. Mana and Téa were even more similar to each other than he'd first guessed, despite living in two different cultures 3000 years apart, and they had both given him what he'd needed in both time periods. As much as he cared for Téa, Mana was where his heart lay and she had waited patiently for him for 3000 years, and he could not justify making her wait any longer. It pained him that he had to hurt this sweet girl who so closely resembled his love in both looks and character, but he knew if he stayed, he could not make her happy the same way that Yugi could not make Mana happy if he were ever placed into that situation. Téa didn't realize it yet, but what she loved in him, Yugi now had. All she had to do was look, but she wouldn't see it while he was still around. He had complete faith in Yugi, his chosen heir and the new king.

"Téa, you don't need to get it," Joey said. "You just need to accept it, y'know? And burn these memories into your brain. The time you've spent with him… the feelings… burn it in so you never forget!"

"Téa… Joey… Thank you," Atem thought.

"Yugi! Even if you're a king, you're still Yugi! Even if a thousand years pass, we'll always be friends!" Joey shouted.

Only then did Atem have the courage to look over his shoulder and look at each of his modern friends one last time. Yugi, Joey, Téa, Tristan… He hadn't met them in his first life, and he hadn't known them as long as some of his other friends from his life in Ancient Egypt, but there were no less important to him. He smiled at them all and nodded. "Right!"

There were still tears in their eyes and pain in their hearts, but there were also smiles. Brave smiles to remember him and letting him move on. He turned back to the open doorway and gave them all his signature thumbs up gesture. They would all be okay. They were strong and had each other, and he would never leave their hearts or memories.

"Thank you my partner, my friends…" Atem thought as he stepped into the light without any regrets. His clothes changed around him from modern to Ancient and his family and friends were there on the other side, waiting to welcome his return home.

... But as soon as he saw Aknadin had somehow managed to secure a place in the Afterlife instead of having his heart devoured by Ammeit, he promptly turned on his heel and walked back through the door to Yugi to live his eternity as a ghost. Because there was no way in nonexistent Hell he was going to spend eternity living with the man who single-handedly summoned Zorc to the earthly plane and decimated all of Egypt by extension.

Okay, obviously the above paragraph wasn't meant to be a legitimate ending to the story, but I'm still legitimately bitter after all this time that Aknadin was standing there in the Afterlife (I don't care if he looks younger, it doesn't matter to Ammeit! Maybe Aknamkanon made a cardboard cutout of him or something?).

Explanations! Well, I wanted to write something that shows the importance Téa has to Yami. In the first panel of the chapter with their date, he decides it's okay that he doesn't know who he is or where he came from if it means he can stay with Yugi, even though he's not okay with that. He even shares these feelings with Téa and she is the first one to encourage him to pursue his lost memories, even though she dreads it means he'll leave forever, because it's what he needs. He even wanted her to not tell Yugi what he was planning to do just yet, so she was the first one who knew his feelings about the matter too.

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Yami wasn't entirely aware he and Yugi were two separate people in the early days of his awakening. He was an insane, psychopathic, homicidal, pyromaniac at the time and when he rescued Téa from her hostage situation, it was only his fourth shadow game in the manga since the Puzzle was solved (second if you go by season 0).

Ah, now the Memory World. In the manga, Atem and Mana barely share any page time at all, compared to the anime, but what little there is exists as powerful vaseshipping material. In the manga, he never met Mana before Mahad became the Dark Magician, yet as soon as he saw her, he recognized her instantly and even knew her name. Throughout the entirety of the Memory World arc, Mana is the only person he had such a reaction to.

At the end of the series in manga and anime, Yugi defeats Atem in the Ceremonial Duel and passes on to the Afterlife. In other words, the old king (Atem) dies and leaves behind his successor, the heir to his power and the new king (Yugi). I headcanon that the ending is a metaphor for "Prince" Yugi inheriting the throne from his Pharaoh father-figure. Don't judge me.