A/N: Manga canon, content warnings for anything you would see in the manga plus a little bit of language.
Dead Draw
1. Fear
This is Ryuuji's earliest memory.
He's three—or four, he isn't sure—and a strange woman is bending over him. The image of her face and her body is lost to time, but the sound of her voice, a comforting murmur that washes over him like warm water, remains embedded in his consciousness well into adulthood. She wants to know if he's lost, where his mother is. "Let's find her," she says. He doesn't understand, but he follows her through the store. It's a maze of giant strange shapes, flashing lights and never-ending corridors.
He can't remember much else: what kind of store it was, the name of the town or the time or day or year, but he remembers her hand being smacked away from his, his father pulling him back with a string of vile obscenities. He doesn't remember the rest, but he knows how the story ends, because it happens again and again: the gathering crowd, the terrified way his father holds him close, the purple shadows of fingerprints lingering on his wrist for days, his father crying in the car, fumbling with the keys, dropping them again and again in his frantic efforts to get them in the ignition.
"You're okay," his father says. He repeats these words every time like a mantra. "You're okay, they won't take you. I won't let them take you. Don't worry. You're okay. You're okay. They won't take you. You're okay."
It takes him a long time to realize that things weren't okay. By seven, he's old enough to recognize that something is wrong, but not old enough to name it.
He can hear sounds from the kitchen; small snuffling noises, hasty murmurs, an occasional gasp of surprise. He pauses in the dark hallway and listens, his toes curling inside his socks, his hand clutching the end of his t-shirt.
Maybe he should just go back to bed. He's thirsty, but he'll be able to sleep, and sometimes it's not worth disturbing his father when he's like this. Dad doesn't like to be startled; not when he thinks he's alone.
So what? You'll just run away like a baby? Scared of the dark and the things crawling on the wall, things you've seen and felt and faced and—
The clink of silverware. The rush of moving water. Ryuuji rubs a hand along the seam of his pajama pants and listens to the rise and fall of his father's voice, catching rare words slipping out into the corridor: "…again…got to…"
A knot of worry forms in his throat, and Ryuuji swallows and steps into the doorway, rapping the tips of his fingers lightly against the wood paneling. It's not real wood, just the fake stuff; they'll live in this apartment for a few months and then move on. We're putting everything we have into the future, that's what you need to remember—
"Dad," he says, mindful of the way the figure at the sink tenses, turns halfway toward him and stops. The single light bulb on the ceiling casts wild shadows that fly across the floor. Like the black hands on the edge of the Board—
Ryuuji stops, eyes down, until the shadows recede, until his father turns back to the sink, his hand faltering as he reaches up and pulls the mask down over his face.
And then come the whispers, light and scrambling along the corners of the room, slipping out from behind the mask and curling behind Ryuuji's ears. "Why aren't you in bed?"
Ryuuji steps out of the doorway, sidles up to the sink. "I'm thirsty."
His father is doing the dishes; scrubbing a big iron pot left over from dinner. His hands move quickly, jerking around the interior of the dish as he nods. Once. Twice. He takes his hands out of the water, suds bunching up around the wrinkles on his skin. He pushes the spigot towards Ryuuji and watches as Ryuuji stands on his toes to grab a plastic cup from the cabinet beside the sink, reaches forward to fill the cup halfway full.
The cup is warm beneath Ryuuji's fingers; the water inside is hot. Ryuuji retreats to the kitchen table, pulls out a chair and sits, tucking one knee under his chin and nursing the water in the cup. Watching.
His father turns back to the sink, submerging his hands under the water. He takes hold of the pot and grips it in one hand, the other swerving along the inner wall of the pot in one smooth motion. Turn, repeat. Turn, repeat.
Ryuuji watches, mesmerized, as his father's hands move faster and faster, the water splashing over the edges of the sink as the pot spun round and round. Even when he finishes off the cup the pot is still spinning, and the knot stays stuck in Ryuuji's throat.
"Dad—?"
There is no reply; his father's motions only become more erratic. The pot keeps spinning. Ryuuji puts the cup down, plastic tapping against the linoleum tabletop, and rises to his feet.
"Dad, please—"
A splatter of water hits the floor, a strangled moan escapes from under the mask. Ryuuji's father leans forward, his incoherent mumbling thickening into words Ryuuji understands and loathes.
"…Muto…Sugoroku…"
The knot thickens, and Ryuuji takes another stop forward, hand hovering over the steady rise and fall of his father's shoulder, his eyes fixed on the pot spinning in the sink. His father keeps muttering that name—
"Dad, stop it!'
His father jerks backwards, taking the pot with him. As water splashes over the edge of the sink and onto the floor, Ryuuji grabs at the rim of the pot and inadvertently knocks it out of his father's hands.
It clatters onto the tile between them and Ryuuji flinches back, hands raised to his ears. When he dares look up, he sees his father's eyes through the mask. He lowers his arms and crouches, picks up the pot. Dirty dishwater pools around him and soaks into his socks.
"I'm sorry," he says, gaze fixed on the floor.
He watches his father's feet shuffle along the tile, water sloshing under the countertops. Step. pause. The creak of the faucet, the roar of running water.
"Well?" his father says. "Give it here."
Ryuuji hands off the pot and his father rinses it out in silence, turns off the tap, and puts it upside down on the kitchen counter to dry.
He wrings out the rag and gives it to Ryuuji, and then circles the room, leaving wet treads in his wake. There's a folding stool wedged between the fridge and the wall; he pulls it out and clambers up until he can reach the top of the fridge, where he picks up an oblong wooden case. He moves slowly, his breath echoing hollow in the dark room, his shadows looming on the far wall; but Ryuuji doesn't watch, he sops up the water until the floor is clean. He stands up to wring out the dirty water and hangs the rag over the faucet to dry. By the time he turns around his father has already set up the game.
The chess board is an antique, a relic his father picked up from a street vendor in Jerusalem. It's a beautiful object: the olive-wood tiles alternate in color from rich dark walnut to a pale perfect ivory, the surface scored by decades of frequent use. The pieces, his dad says, are bone, and worn so smooth as to be indistinguishable except by size. The kings and queens, especially, are hard to tell apart, but Ryuuji has learned by feel the narrower waist and knobbed crown on the queen, the heavier bulk of her husband.
He doesn't care for chess. It takes too long, hours at a time sitting, trying to think five moves ahead (and then seven, and then ten, his father insists; he needs to be able to look down at the board and see every move up till the checkmate on the horizon. Then, his father says, they'll be ready.) Chess feels unfair, especially when Ryuuji's only been playing four years against his father's forty. He prefers games of chance: the great equalizer. There's nothing at stake if a good player will always beat a poor one.
The game his father sets up is already in endgame, half the pawns on either side lost to unknown gambits, queens captured and lying desolate to the side. Ryuuji is familiar with this composition; he's seen it before, and what happens every time happens now: his father stands aside, waits for him to pick light or dark.
The idea is to pick the side most likely to win, but Ryuuji's played this board often enough to know that he'll lose no matter which side he picks. If he tries to use any of the strategies he's seen his father use in the past, he'll fall into a trap. If he tries to come up with his own, he will inevitably make a mistake.
They'll keep playing this board until Ryuuji figures out a way to win. That's the way it works.
He picks dark and climbs into the chair, tucking his legs underneath him and leaning forward on his elbows to survey the table. The kitchen light above him casts his shadow over the table and across the floor, the shape swaying as his father pulls out his own chair and sits down, folding his hands, bowing his head.
They play without speaking.
It's not always like this. During the day, Ryuuji's father would harangue him on technique or just insult him until he figured out a way to win, but on these nights, when the nightmares threaten to overwhelm, they spend hours in silent companionship. It was a treaty, the terms of which were unspoken; a way of extending the hand of grace when they couldn't grant it to themselves.
When Ryuuji finally makes a mistake, leaves his king exposed, his stomach sinks with disappointment, but it doesn't go into horrific freefall, not yet. He just stills, the urge to fidget fading, and his father sighs, begins to gather up the pieces.
"Go to bed," he says, and gratefully Ryuuji slips out of the chair and into the hall. Behind him, his father's hunched shoulders tense. Later, the muttering will start again. Later, his father will shuffle down the hall to stand in his doorway of Ryuuji's bedroom, his shadow darkening the wall above Ryuuji's bed, his breathing heavy and slow.
Later, Ryuuji will pretend to sleep while his heart hammers against his ribs, his breath forcing itself out of his lungs as he tells himself to be still, to be quiet.
When he closes his eyes, the shadows on the wall turn to look at him.
They have many other nights like this, and many more worse. It gets harder as Ryuuji gets older, but his coping methods evolve with his father's insanity. By the time he's ten, he's learned how to put on a brave face for the outside world, and by the time he's a teenager, he's acting the role so naturally he may as well be wearing a mask himself.
He has no choice. He's left to be the face of their family; to do the errands, to make sure they don't default on their month-to-month lease, to keep the fridge stocked, the utilities on and their savings intact.
Most of their living expenses are paid through small stints in the performing arts; birthday parties, cabarets, street fairs. Most of the time Ryuuji can get by on his own; he has a decent repertoire of magic tricks and a carefully cultivated charm, but they do better when his dad is having a good day, when they can perform together. Ryuuji can draw a crowd, but he's not skilled enough to keep their attention and he's growing too old to get by on the novelty of his age.
In between performances, they've started to follow the stock markets. Ryuuji has proved unusually adept at picking winning ventures and he loves it; it's the closest he can get to gambling. Ryuuji's father doesn't care where the money comes from; all he cares about anymore is the Game, is Sugoroku Muto, is revenge and salvation and justice.
So they get have fewer close calls, only one that stands out enough for Ryuuji to remember, if only for the brief expression of naked emotion it evokes from both of them.
He's thirteen, chatting with the nurse taking his blood pressure, trying to make her laugh with stupid childish jokes and the easy boyish charm he's learned to turn on and off like a light. Behind her, he can see his father's hands, clenched around the arms of his chair. He's been left forgotten in a corner of the room, helpless to intrude.
He's become so much more paranoid in these last few years, refusing to leave the house, reluctant to let Ryuuji go to school, neglecting Ryuuji's entreaties to play the games he invents on their endless nights alone. They've been here almost a year, and it's the longest they've stayed in one town, but the city is big enough to accommodate them. It's easier to be anonymous here, to fade into the shadows when society turns a disapproving eye.
But neither of them can do anything about the cold Ryuuji catches after getting caught in a surprise squall during a night market. They ignore it until it becomes a cough that wracks his lungs, until his fever is dangerously high and his father is forced to overcome his paranoia, to make a rare trip into the outside world. And Ryuuji is trying to make the nurse laugh, even half-delirious, because he doesn't want her to see how guilty he feels. He knows that every minute spent here is eating into their savings. He doesn't want his father to lose his temper, to start one of his rants or to go catatonic. He doesn't want the nurse to start asking questions.
["Where's your mother?"]["Is that really your dad?"]["Are you okay?"]["Do you need help?"][It's safe, you can tell me—"]
"Does that hurt?" she asks, taping the IV to his arm, and he smiles. No, of course not.
When the nurse goes to fetch the doctor he closes his eyes, lies back into the flat hospital pillow, lets the fog of the fever take over. He's only half conscious when the nurse comes back, doctor in tow. He hears them ask his father questions in high tones and hears his father answer them in low ones, hears the nurse say, too brightly, "You've got a lovely boy there, Mr. Otogi, such a sweet boy."
The mask makes her nervous; it makes everyone nervous.
Yes, his father says, I really do.
The doctor writes something down on a pad, tears out the paper, gives it to his father. They want Ryuuji to stay the night. His father remains in the chair until darkness envelopes the room.
When Ryuuji wakes up to find his father standing over him, his silhouette visible by the light coming in under the door, he can only beg for forgiveness.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'll make the money back. I'll work harder. I'll fix it."
His father stops him with a hand on his forehead. He pushes the damp hair aside, gently, his voice cracking.
"Just get better," he says. "You're all I have."
Now Ryuuji is fifteen and his father is screaming.
It was Ryuuji's fault; he'd spotted the magazine in the corner of the rack, nestled between tech reviews and kid's manga, and he'd recognized the name on the cover, thought the boy had a resemblance to the face he'd seen thousands of times in grainy newspaper pictures, thought "maybe—" and sprang the extra 200 yen to bring it home and read it in private. He didn't count on his father digging through the bags while Ryuuji put away his coat, seeing the picture, and going ballistic.
So Ryuuji had guessed right. The kid was related to the old treasure hunter, but what Ryuuji hadn't seen, because he'd never seen it, because he didn't even know what it was supposed to look like, was the necklace around the boy's neck, the eye of Horus staring him in the face. The possibility of someone solving the Millennium Puzzle had never occurred to either of them.
How can he have solved it? It's unsolvable! It's a trick, it's not real, if Sugoroku couldn't solve it how could some kid do it—
He tries to talk his father down, tries to come up with an explanation that will calm him, but his father's voice keeps rising over his, shrieking something about the King of Games, about a thousand-year curse, about the ghost of a vengeful god.
The hair stands up on the back of Ryuuji's neck. He's heard this story before, and no matter how ridiculous it gets, he believes it. He has to believe it, because the black hands of the Devil's Board Game are always appearing in the corners of his vision, shadows crawling on the wall and haunting his dreams with arcane gestures. If Sugoroku had mastered even that nightmare, a haunted puzzle must be child's play.
"This is right," his father announces abruptly, going still. "My son against his grandson. It's fate. That Puzzle is your birthright, and he's just wearing it like a…like a…"
He shrieks again and Ryuuji takes a wary step back, but his father just bends over and slams his fists into the table. He stands there, panting, for a minute, and then he speaks again, his voice quiet.
"Read it."
So Ryuuji flips through the magazine, finds the interview, and reads it aloud, well aware of how every detail makes his father groan with rage.
Yugi Muto was a dark horse in the Duelist Kingdom championship, a relative nobody whose only qualification was a win against the previous champion Seto Kaiba in an private match. He threw the gaming world into a minor uproar when he become the first Duel Monsters player to beat inventor Pegasus Crawford at his own game. He went to high school in Domino City, where his grandfather owned a game shop (Ryuuji's father sighs). Yugi liked American food, puzzles, games of all kinds and spending time with his friends. The only mention of the Puzzle itself was a trivia blurb in the sidebar where Yugi identified it as "the most difficult puzzle I've ever solved, and my greatest treasure."
"Duel Monsters is his game," his father says. "You'll beat him at Duel Monsters."
Ryuuji closes the magazine and places it back on the table. He doesn't want to play Duel Monsters. It's too much like chess: too weighted in favor of the expert. All you needed to be good at DM was a decent grasp of the rules and enough money to build a good deck. Why else had Kaiba been the champion so long? He'd bought the rarest cards and broken the game. Yugi's grandfather owned a game store—surely Yugi had access to all the cards he wanted. Ryuuji wanted to play a game where even an amateur had a chance of winning. He wanted a game where the win would feel fair, and he didn't trust himself enough to rely on his own skill. If Fate would not intervene, no amount of preparation would save him.
"If he's the 'King of Games'," Ryuuji points out, cautiously, "The game doesn't matter. I want to beat him at one of my games."
His father doesn't look up, but his shoulders stop shaking. "The dice game?"
Ryuuji nods. It's a risky gambit, disagreeing with his father. His dad tolerated game design as a harmless hobby, but he'd been reluctant to help Ryuuji find a publisher for Dungeon Dice Monsters. It had always seemed pointless, before.
Slowly, Ryuuji's father straightens.
"Finish your game," he said. "And start looking at real estate in Domino."
2. Exposure
When it's all over, when the fire has worn away their defenses, they finally have the time to see each other for what they are. They stare, examining the other, smoke-worn and red-eyed; tears on his father's face and coals of fear in Ryuuji's stomach.
The fireman is speaking to him, saying something about containment, about insurance, and Ryuuji listens without hearing. He knows that he's saying something back, that it must be making sense, because the fireman is nodding, but Ryuuji's world has been reduced to static and smoke. Darkness fills the entirety of his vision, reaching for him like the black hands in his dreams, but this fire is real; the smoke dissipates cleanly in the afternoon sun in a way he knows his nightmares never will. He tries to imagine the cursed game charring, crumbling into ashes, and finds it impossible. You can't destroy something like that. Not even with fire.
Someone brushes against his shoulder, but he doesn't realize it's intentional until there's another touch, this time at his elbow, the pressure light, hesitant.
It's him. You've waited your whole life for this and now—
He smiles when their eyes meet. "You all right?" he asks. "You look a little dazed."
When Ryuuji keeps staring, uncomprehending, he laughs and holds out his hand.
"Sugoroku Muto." He shakes hands firmly, like a businessman, but Ryuuji thinks the kindness is genuine. "But I'm sure you already knew that."
Ryuuji looks back at his father, sees him questioning one of the medics. They'd taken Yugi out in an ambulance, with constant and firm assurances that he'd be fine, but Ryuuji's dad had kept asking, even after the ambulance left. It makes something twist inside Ryuuji, something ugly, and he can't stand to look for too long.
"It's all right," Sugoroku says, not waiting for him to apologize, a smile playing around his features. "We live above the Kame Game shop. Come by sometime, when the dust settles. I'd like to chat. I'm sure Yugi would, too."
"Right," Ryuuji says, because he doesn't know what else to say, because Sugoroku keeps looking at him like he knows what he's thinking. Behind them, the firelight pierces the smoke and burns red halos in the air. Ryuuji looks for the narrowness in Sugoroku's eyes and never finds it. He wants to believe that the old man hates him, that he pities him, that he's feeling anything more than concern. Instead, his smile broadens, he reaches out to squeeze Ryuuji's arm.
It's weirdly paternal, but Ryuuji is surprised to discover it doesn't bother him.
"He'll be fine, you know," Sugoroku tells him. "Yugi. He's tougher than you think." He tilts his chin, just slightly, studies him. "So are you, I bet."
The words somehow trigger an automatic response in Ryuuji's brain. "I'm fine," he says, He can feel the loose ends of his thoughts curling up, disintegrating, his old cynical clarity coming back like a habit he can't shake.
"Kame, was it?" he says, knowing he's fooling no one. "Thanks. I'll see you around."
"Just come by when you have the chance," Sugoroku says again. "Please."
"I will," Ryuuji promises, and he wishes that this, too, was a lie, but he knows that he won't be able to help himself.
The next day, one of Yugi's friends — Mazaki — approaches him at school, tells him they're going to the hospital, asks him to go along. He'd accepts. He hopes it will relieve some of his own guilt.
It doesn't. He sits through the well-meaning questions, asks a few of his own, watches them all fall into the same comfortable mannerisms natural to a close group of friends. He remains on the outside.
It's not their fault. He likes Yugi's friends, wishes he could reciprocate their feelings, but every time Anzu leans close to trade a bit of gossip, or Honda clues him in on some inside joke, or Yugi laughs so brilliantly, he feels like he's living a lie. He met these people while playing a role, and he still hasn't been able to shake the feeling that he's acting, that all they know about him is the character he pretended to be.
He knows it's his problem, not theirs; they've done everything they could to make him feel welcome. He knows that he distances himself, that he leans on wit when sincerity pushes too close. He feels the overwhelming need to beg for their forgiveness, but he doesn't know where to start. The one time he'd tried to stutter out an apology, Jounouchi had cut him off with a wave of the hand.
"Forget it, man," he'd said. "It's cool."
From the bed, Yugi nods, beatific, as if just the act of apologizing is enough to redeem a lifetime.
Ryuuji knows Jounouchi means well, that they all do, but it doesn't help. He lingers as long as he can, but eventually they all start trickling out, and he can't stand the idea of being alone with Yugi and the Spirit of the Puzzle. Yugi had insisted that there was no hard feelings, but the spirit of the Puzzle never actually confirms it.
Ryuuji leaves Yugi's room, but he doesn't leave the hospital. He heads the other way, through the burn ward, down the hall, to the corner room that's been weighing in the back of his head all morning.
His father didn't suffer any injuries, but they hospitalized him anyway. Because of his age, they said, but more likely it was because of his obvious hysteria, the way he couldn't track a conversation, kept bursting into tears. Ryuuji didn't said anything when they took him. He watched. He thought it was the right thing. He thought they needed the space.
It had been a mistake. He stayed with the firefighters until the fire sputtered and faded out at last, had walked in the warm night back to their apartment by himself. He didn't try to sleep, had instead spent hours of nameless dread staring at shifting patterns of light on the ceiling. He'd avoided the bedroom, stayed on the couch, watching TV until the sun came up, until the nausea and the anxious hollow in his chest thinned out enough for him to go to school, to fake it until the end of the day.
But the hospital tells him that they need the bed, and Ryuuji can't sleep in the apartment by himself, and seeing Yugi like that, perfect despite the pain, hasn't done anything to ease his guilt.
The room is dark, the blinds drawn, the light from the doorway spearing across the floor, hurling Ryuuji's shadow against the opposite wall. The tv flickers blue light on the bed: the evening news on mute.
His father's not in the bed, he's in a wheelchair by the window, his face to the wall, his shoulders hunched. Ryuuji resists the urge to close the door, he leaves it open as he approaches the wheelchair from behind, twisting his school jacket in his hands.
He stops just within arm's reach. Except for the muted beeps of the medical equipment and the occasional patter of footsteps in the hall, the room is silent.
Ryuuji doesn't want to be the one to speak first, but his concept of loss is altered; he has nothing to gain by claiming the high ground.
"Hi, Dad."
The shadows on the wall shift. Behind him, Ryuuji hears the voice of a nurse in a far room. His father's own voice, when it finally comes, is hoarse. Smoke inhalation. Yugi's voice had been like that, too.
"Where have you been?"
His first impulse is to apologize, but Ryuuji's fingers clench in the fabric of his coat, the teeth of a zipper digging into his palm.
"School."
There's no response from the wheelchair. Ryuuji takes a breath and tries again. "I just came from Yugi Muto's room. He and that blond—Jounouchi—they're here, too."
His father grunts noncommittally, and Ryuuji sighs.
"They asked about you, you know."
The voice of the nurse down the hall disappears, Ryuuji hears the click of shoes fade away. He glances at the doorway.
"What did you tell them?" His father says.
"What?'
"What did you tell them," his father repeats. "About me?'
There's an edge to his voice that Ryuuji doesn't like.
"I made something up," he says flatly. To his surprise, his dad doesn't rise to the bait, doesn't react at all. Ryuuji looks at the doorway again, twists his coat, counts the number of tiles from the bed to the wheelchair, from the wheelchair to the door.
"Look," he says, "I'm sorry, okay? I know it was—I should have been here last night. I just—I couldn't deal with it anymore, Dad. Not after not after what happened. It wasn't—"
He stops himself. If he keeps going he'll start to babble. He hates this part: the silent disappointment, the fruitless search for the right words to make things the way they're supposed to be.
He doesn't even know what things should be anymore; they have to find a way forward and he doesn't know where to start.
He shifts his focus away from the immobile shadow in the wheelchair, crosses the room to the window, peers through the blinds into the evening beyond. The sun has only just set, but it's a clear night; the wind whips through the trees and into the empty streets. Below him, he can see the parking lot. There's a couple standing in the light of the entryway, probably waiting for something or someone.
"I thought you weren't coming back."
Ryuuji's eyes have adjusted to the darkness by now, and he sees his father's fingers clench on the arm of the wheelchair. He forces a laugh and stares at the couple in the parking lot. They're whispering now, the woman pressing into the man, their faces close.
"Yeah, right," he says. "You know I've got nowhere else to go."
His father doesn't reply, but Ryuuji can hear the whine in the back of his throat, the shuddering gasps, that means he's about to cry. He closes his eyes.
"Fuck it!" he spits out, slamming a hand against the wall, the blinds rustling beside him. "It's over. Let's just forget it ever happened and move on—"
His father's laughter is sudden and uncontrolled, his eyelids red and wet, but his pupils below them are cold and still so sharp. "Move on? I thought I told you—" and he makes the effort to lean forward, though Ryuuji can see in his face that every motion pains him: the agony is building in the set of his jaw. "There's no point."
"You said that yesterday." Ryuuji watches an old Toyota drive through the parking lot, slow to a crawl, then turn around and pull away without ever stopping. "So what now?" he says. "Should I kill myself?""
He's being sardonic, but there's a real question rooted in his words, and he waits as his father leans carefully back into the chair, rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand. The way he stares at Ryuuji, with the vague, upturned tilt to his lips, is almost compassionate.
"I don't know," he says. "What do you think?"
The couple is walking through the parking lot now. Ryuuji watches their silhouettes melt into the twilight as they reached the road and disappear behind a hedge. If he stretches his neck, he can still see the tops of their heads bobbing down the sidewalk. He doesn't try. He doesn't want to think about the world outside this room.
"I guess we should see what else there is," he says. "We've got time."
There are tears on his father's face, but his laughter is bitter.
"You have time," he says. "Is there anything else? I don't know. I don't know. I hope you find it."
Yugi and his friends have an end-of-term party around Christmastime, an informal affair at Yugi's house consisting of video games and pizza and half a dozen strings of mismatched lights. True to the spirit of the holiday, Joey and Tristan had cornered Ryuuji after school and demanded he show up.
What the hell, Ryuuji thinks. Might as well get out of the house.
He walks through the door and someone shoves a scalding mug of cocoa into his hands and herds him into the living room, where Jounouchi and Honda are violently engaged in a round of Goldeneye. It's festive, in a way: despite all the smacktalk there's an air of camaraderie in the room.
Ryuuji lurks on the sidelines, interjecting sarcastic bullshit into the conversation and hitting on Anzu. She takes it with remarkable good grace and he soon gives it up for actual conversation; he finds that he likes her too much to annoy her. She tells him that the Kaiba brothers had been invited. No one actually expected them to show; but the others had put money on whether or not Seto would RSVP.
She wants to include him; they all do, but the conversations remain painfully surface level and Ryuuji can't help but resort to cheap digs at Honda and Jounouchi's expense whenever they get too close.
It's self-destructive, but he doesn't know what else to do. Even after Battle City, he still feels distant from them. They're friends, but not friends with him, not the way they are with each other. Yugi's friends would die for him, and vice versa. Ryuuji isn't sure where he falls in that equation, but he knows that they all pale in comparison with the ghost that lives in Yugi's head. He feels unsettled every time he hears Yugi laughing, every time he sees him make a secret smile at some joke that no one else can hear, catches him mumbling to himself and conversing with thin air. It doesn't seem to bother the others, and it makes Ryuuji wonder how much of his unease is unfamiliarity and how much is something darker.
By the time he's drained the mug, he's irritated with himself and exhausted from the pretense. He slinks into the kitchen, hoping to catch a quiet moment where he can talk himself into acting like the person they clearly want him to be.
His reprieve is short lived. He turns the corner and finds himself face to face with Yugi's grandfather.
Sugoroku blinks at him and smiles. "Too loud out there, eh?"
Ryuuji sidles around him and along the counter, mumbling something about putting his cup away, hoping he can avoid getting roped into a conversation.
The old man laughs him off and waves an airy hand. "Just set it anywhere. I'll make Yugi clean it up later." He's smaller than he was in the photographs Ryuuji had been raised on, bent and wizened by age and experience, but he still has an overwhelming presence in the room; for all his good cheer and innocence Ryuuji knows Sugoroku is still as cunning and dangerous as he was in his prime.
Sugoroku is pouring himself a glass of water. He eyes Ryuuji from where he's standing and turns off the tap. "You all right, young man? You look a little pale."
Ryuuji forces a laugh. Sure, he'd had the requisite talk with both Mutos after the fire, one that consisted mostly of apologies and an extremely abbreviated version of his life story. He'd glossed over the depths to which his life had revolved around revenge. He hadn't wanted Sugoroku to know how difficult it was to even talk to him, to look him in the eyes, to speak calmly, to discard the past and believe the evidence in front of him.
So yes, he avoids Sugoroku when he can help it, and although Ryuuji suspects the old man knows more than he lets on, he's not willing to drop the act. He has no choice but to play along until he can find an excuse to leave.
"I was going to get elbowed in the face if I stayed in there any longer," He says drily. It's a little less polished than he would like, but he's not at the top of his game. "I'm not sure Jou understands that Nintendo's not a sport."
Sugoroku nods, but too slowly. He sips at his water. "How's school going? You pass your finals?"
"Sure," Ryuuji says. "Unlike some people, I actually do my homework."
That gets a laugh out of Sugoroku. "You should see the way I get after Yugi," he says. "His mother too. We've threatened everything short of capital punishment and that boy still spends all his free time playing games."
"Who could blame him?" Ryuuji murmurs. He's looking for a sign that Sugoroku's on his way out the door, but the old man isn't budging.
Instead Sugoroku takes another sip of water and sets the glass down on the counter. "How's your father doing these days?"
Ryuuji knows it's normal small talk; it's exactly what any parent of a friend would ask, but the question hurts. Sugoroku expects an honest answer, and he might be the only person in the world who deserves one.
Ryuuji doesn't trust his ability to lie convincingly. He shrugs, but he has to say something, so he makes up some triviality about the cold weather keeping his dad inside, about the rain, and it's fine it's all fine we're fine—but he's losing control, losing count of the tiles in the floor.
Sugoroku joins him at the counter and Ryuuji's eyes fall on Sugoroku's hands, gnarled and veiny, folded on the countertop. Waiting.
Sugoroku speaks softly, his voice barely audible above the shouts from the living room.
"It's still just the two of you, isn't it?"
Ryuuji's chest constricts, and he laughs to shake the feeling off. Too loud. "Yeah," he says. "Just us."
"It can be hard, being on your own."
The budding panic in Ryuuji's throat freezes over, his thoughts crystalize. His fist closes on the countertop, knuckles paling.
"It's not hard," he says, reveling in his sudden anger. "I'm fine. We're fine."
Sugoroku, to his credit, doesn't press the issue. He doesn't even apologize, which might have been worse. Instead he sucks his teeth, his thumb tracing slow circles on the inside of his palm. "I know you are," he says. "You're smart, you've got a good heart. You know what you're doing." He breaks away from the counter, presses his hand to Ryuuji's elbow and squeezing, just briefly. "You're father's lucky to have you."
And then he's gone, and Ryuuji is left staring at the doorway in bewildered wonder, because no one has ever said those words to him, because Sugoroku Muto just said those words to him.
When he wanders back into the living room, Jounouchi bowls him over with a side tackle and challenges him to a game, and Ryuuji says something that must have been clever, because Honda laughs and Jounouchi deflates, but Ryuuji can't identify what they're talking about, what game they're playing. The mask is in place again, and under it all he can think is lucky to have you. Lucky to have you. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky.
He wants to laugh. He wants to shake Sugoroku by the shoulders and scream until the old man understands that they're not lucky, they're cursed, they have losing streaks stretching back before Ryuuji was born, and no, Ryuuji's not fine, he's terrified, he hates going home, he doesn't know what he's doing, how to fix things, how to find the reason that makes people keep going, and god he needs a reason to keep going.
After Anzu leaves and Honda falls asleep on the couch—when Ryuuji has a valid excuse to get out—he moves slowly through the house, gathering his coat, avoiding the corner where Yugi and Jou are bowed over a passionate discussion about warrior-type cards, wandering through the kitchen to the back of the building, ducking into a dark hallway, following it to the study, where warm lamplight floods into the corridor.
Sugoroku is inside, a game of solitaire spread out on the coffee table in front of him. There's a radio playing softly somewhere, a talk show, the speaker's voice coffee-rich and invested. The radio host is interviewing someone, a screenwriter or something, Ryuuji isn't listening; all he sees is the hunched shoulders, the gnarled hands, the absent, meaningless mutter of Sugoroku talking to himself.
They're so similar, Sugoroku and his dad, and yet so damnably different, and the rant Ryuuji has been rehearsing all evening collapses into ashes in his mouth, and Sugoroku looks up, sees him, smiles (Yugi smiles the same way: unassuming, eager) and pats the seat on the couch next to him.
Ryuuji crosses the room, sits down, presses his hands between his knees. He doesn't know what to say, but Sugoroku doesn't ask him to say anything, just gathers up the cards, shuffling them with the seamless mastery of an old pro.
"Do you know how to play cribbage?" He doesn't wait for Ryuuji's reply and pulls a board out from the shelf behind him. "Yugi knows how, but I wouldn't mind playing an opponent I have a hope of winning against."
Ryuuji can't help it; he laughs, and the corners of Sugoroku's eyes crease. The man on the radio keeps talking, and the edges of the night grow a little softer.
3. Extinction
The apartment is quieter now.
It's all still novel to Ryuuji; he'd never expected to have a life that was in any sense traditional, but ever since the fire, his father has hollowed out. He makes no effort to control what Ryuuji does; whether it's go to public school or pursue a career or spend time with his friends (and he has friends now; that's something Ryuuji's never even dreamed of).
In the evenings, when Ryuuji is home, his father comes to life a little, will banter with him, will play the little games Ryuuji invents to keep him entertained. The rest of the time he seems lost. He wanders the house, flips through the channels on the TV, puts together puzzles, plays chess. (Against himself, mostly; Ryuuji humors him when he can but he rarely has the time anymore.)
He treats Ryuuji's attempts at conversation with quiet resignation or outright indifference. He listens as Ryuuji relates his plans for the future, and while he's not enthusiastic, he at least doesn't bother with criticism. He's traded vengeance for shame; his bursts of uncontrollable sobbing are more frequent than they used to be, and it bothers Ryuuji more than the yelling and violence ever did. He doesn't know what to expect out of this new person his father has become, and he doesn't know what kind of person his father expects of him.
And there are some things, too many things, that aren't different at all. His father is as hard to talk to as he ever was, as incomprehensible to understand. He doesn't get angry anymore, not outwardly, but having the anger focused in a different direction isn't helping either of them. Ryuuji still wakes up at the slightest sound. His father still spends most nights pacing the hallways. They've lost their thirst for revenge, but they've been unable to find anything to replace it.
Ryuuji tries. He still holds sole responsibility over maintaining the household, their finances, their health, and many times he's had to admit that he doesn't really see the point. When he's not in school he forces himself to be productive, to find distributors for DDD, to pursue a future internship at Industrial Illusions. He does homework, he trades stock. He tells himself he wants to build up the capital to buy another store, one just for him, where he can make enough income to supplement his passion for game design. He doesn't want to be stuck in this loop of self-pity forever, but he doesn't know if work will be enough to get him out.
He doesn't know if his father can still be saved, and he's afraid he won't have time to find out. In the year since the fire, his father seems to have aged ten. He hunches over himself as he walks, his bones creaking as he circles the kitchen, his hands shaking as he bats off invisible demons. His voice is tremulous, his thoughts disconnected and hard to follow.
Ryuuji hangs on. He can deal with the ever-increasing catatonia, the abrupt bursts of crying, the endless pacing, the repeated questions and the irrational anger. It's just more of the same. But it gets harder when neither of them can understand what the other wants.
When even the most trivial questions receive a blank look in return (not even blank, more than blank—it wasn't that his father couldn't understand the questions, he couldn't understand why they were being asked or how to answer them) Ryuuji starts looking up local nursing homes. He keeps a list of numbers in his wallet but never calls a single one.
He knows things can't get better but he's hoping that they won't get worse.
"Have you thought about getting…professional help?"
Ryuuji stops pacing the floor of the Kame Game Shop and spins toward Sugoroku, who stands at the counter, sorting a box of new boosters into the display case. He doesn't have to say anything, because Sugoroku has this way of knowing; he just smiles into the glass and pulls another pack out of the box.
Ryuuji knows he's talking about therapy. As appalling as Ryuuji finds the idea, Sugoroku won't let up. It's more common in other countries, he keeps saying. It might do Ryuuji some good.
In the corner, sorting through some new cards, Yugi bites his lip; they've broached the topic before and Ryuuji has always pushed back.
Ryuuji feels like he has the right to push. He's fine, isn't he? He's coping, he has reasonably healthy relationships, his business ventures are doing well. He sleeps through the night, thanks to his pharmacist, and he doesn't remember his dreams. Hell, he has a fucking support system. (He tells himself this even as he refuses to tell them what it's like to go home).
"I'm fine," he says, which is more an automatic response than anything at this point; Solomon smiles and shrugs; they've had this conversation before. Yugi doesn't say anything, either, he just frowns vaguely at the cards on the floor in front of him, moves one from the "keep" pile to the "maybe" pile.
Ryuuji wishes that Yugi would say something. He hates that Yugi doesn't call him out on his bullshit. Someone has to, and Yugi knows him better than anyone.
As he resumes pacing around the room, Ryuuji sees the way Yugi begins to fidget, how he tugs at his collar. He's still not used to going without the Puzzle, and Ryuuji still isn't used to seeing him without it. These days Yugi often seems lighter, more prone to whimsy and more likely to laugh, but Ryuuji knows that the weight of the Puzzle is still heavy: he knows that Yugi has spent too many sleepless nights thinking about the lives destroyed by the Millennium Items.
He knows Yugi feels responsible, that every time Ryuuji comes to Yugi with his problems, he's just throwing salt in the wound. Even if he can't help relying on Yugi, he wishes he could do something to convince him that he's blameless. If there was anyone who was blameless, it was Yugi.
Honda once told him that courage has to come from other people. At the time, Ryuuji hadn't understood, but now, he thinks, maybe this is what Honda meant.
"I guess it can't hurt," he says. Sugoroku's eyebrows raise in mild disbelief before he sees who Ryuuji is looking at, and then his expression softens.
"It will hurt," he tells Ryuuji. "But I think it might help, too."
The therapist thinks what Ryuuji needs is closure. She talks a lot about self-love and guilt and defense mechanisms and worth and negative thinking, but ultimately, she says, Ryuuji will have to confront his father.
He tells himself she doesn't understand. She doesn't even know half the story; he can't tell her about the parts that defy belief; the demons and the monsters and the ghosts. He can't tell her the curse on his family is a literal one.
One day Ryuuji comes home and the apartment is empty. He walks through all the rooms with a growing sense of unease before returning to the front hall. The front door is locked, the back only leads to a balcony. The house is closed up, no sign of anything amiss.
It's not that bad, it's not like Dad's not allowed to leave, it's just that he never does, and where would he have gone, why did he go—
He doesn't know what to do next, so he resorts back to his normal routine: slip off the coat, shoes, keys; find the most appetizing takeout carton left in the fridge, boot up the computer, sit down, eat, read email, ignore the worry gnawing at his insides.
One hour. He'll give him one hour, and then he'll go looking.
One hour. Two. He keep telling himself to get up, but he feels glued to the couch, to the numbers on the spreadsheets, to the clock ticking on the wall.
It's well past eleven when the phone rings. It's the police. They have his father, they say. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know how to get home. Ryuuji promises to come get him and hangs up, the ache in his chest draining down only to be replaced by newer, harder feelings that he promptly buries.
The police station is mute and cold; the officer at the front desk looks on him with what he perceives as pity as he signs release forms. "Is it just you?" she asks him, leaning over her desk, cracked hands reaching for his.
He pulls away. He just want to get out of here.
The train ride is silent. Ryuuji doesn't trust himself to speak, he resents the way he leans forward on the edge of his seat, hands clenched around the strap of his bag. It's not till they get home, till he's closing the front door behind him, that he can demand to know what happened.
His father moves so slowly now; it seems to take him an eternity to turn around, to reach up and pull down the scarf that's wrapped around his face.
He doesn't wear the mask so much anymore: partly because he rarely leaves the house now, but mostly because Ryuuji won't let him. Ryuuji can't stand the idea of continuing to see that symbol of their failures, even if he hates to look his father in the eyes.
It's just age, he tells himself, has been telling himself ever since he was old enough to understand. It's just what happens to people when they grow old: their muscles decay, droop, thin out and stretch where it they shouldn't, the skin going translucent, silvery veins rising to the surface to spread like weeds against bone. Every person he's ever met has been slowly dying, but none of them have ever been so aware of that fact as his father, who has always known, always understood, where it all ends.
So his father turns to face him, and Ryuuji doesn't move, but the brunt of his anger is gone, and he watches his father sigh, shuffle toward him, reaching out with tears in his eyes. "I'm sorry…" he says. "I'm so sorry."
He keeps apologizing without saying what the apology is for, curling over his own outstretched hands, tears furrowing through the lines in his face. He doesn't look up or change the words, even when his sobs turn into hacking coughs, even when Ryuuji leaps forward in alarm. He doesn't move until Ryuuji puts a hand on his shoulder, and then his father's arm snaps out and clenches a hand in Ryuuji's collar, pulls him down until Ryuuji is halfway crouched over him, holding his father by the shoulders as he cries into Ryuuji's chest.
"Dad," Ryuuji says, struggling to sound calm in the midst of mounting panic. "What happened? Where did you go?"
And his father sucks in a breath. "I don't know," he whispers, his voice breaking. "I don't know, I don't know. I don't remember."
And his fist clenches, the fabric of Ryuuji's collar tightening until it hurts, and his father sobs again.
"Ryuuji," he says. "Ryuuji. I can't remember. "
And Ryuuji finds his heart pounding against his ribs, the air turning to stone around him as he grasps for words that will make everything better, that will make everything make sense, but he couldn't find an answer when their world burned down around them and he can't find one now.
"It's okay," he hears himself saying, the starched cotton of his father's shirt rough under his palms. "It's okay, don't worry. Don't worry."
It's not okay. Ryuuji hangs on a few months more, but he can't take it when his father starts to forget his name, starts screaming at the sight of his own face in the mirror, when he starts talking about the Puzzle again, as if it hadn't already destroyed their lives time and time again, as if it wasn't already destroyed.
The social worker he meets with tells him that a part-time nurse would be more affordable, that his father will probably be better off at home with family than in a strange environment with strange people. Ryuuji can't meet her eyes as he insists on the nursing home.
He finds one in a different prefecture, close to a town he vaguely remembers living in a long time ago. It had only been a few months, back when he was a child, but the familiarity of it is comforting (for both of them, he hopes).
He could have found one closer.
He spends slow weeks packing up boxes when his father is asleep, transferring funds from one account to the other, filling out paperwork. When he finally takes his father out on the train, Ryuuji spends the whole trip designing mazes for him to solve, to keep him from noticing what's going on, from panicking, from asking unanswerable questions. He spends a day signing forms and then leaves his father in the arms of strangers without saying goodbye.
What can you say? That you can't handle it anymore, can't handle this?
He makes it back home in one piece, but when he steps foot inside their apartment the world starts to blur.
No one's home now, no one will ever be home again, and there's nothing to stop him from ripping books off the shelves, upending games pieces onto the floor and snapping the boards in half, smashing dishes into the sink until his palms start to bleed.
The destruction is methodic; he's doing it to keep control. He doesn't lose control. He doesn't know how.
He grabs at the curtains, intending to rip them off the wall but only managing to leave smears of blood on the paisley fabric before he gives up and just leans over the sink, gasping for breath, wishing he remembered how to cry, because damn, he could use that skill right now, and not for the first time he curses his father for fucking him up so badly he can't even emote properly—
Sorry, dad, he thinks, mouthing the words without verbalizing them. If there's anything he's good at, it's apologizing, but he doesn't want to apologize anymore. Wasn't that the point? Freedom? He doesn't feel free. He feels more trapped than ever, and he's starting to realize that even if his father dies, even if by some miraculous twist of fate the past were to stop haunting him, even if the voice in his head started telling him things he wanted to hear, he'd still feel that goddamn awful guilt.
He fucked up; he's never done anything so awful, and what's worse is that he knows he won't do anything to make it better, not this time. This is one mistake he won't ask forgiveness for, because he can't stand to face his father now, even if he doesn't remember who Ryuuji is, even if the grace was freely offered, even if he was on his deathbed, because Ryuuji wants to move on more than he wants absolution, and he doesn't think he can ever move on as long as he's living in the shadow of a dead dream.
He doesn't tell anyone what happened, but they all seem to know anyway.
Sugoroku tells him it's not too late. Bakura, who has always known more than he should, tells him that revenge can't sustain a soul forever. Jounouchi and Honda say nothing, but their unspoken concern is stifling. Anzu's spoken concern is even worse.
Ryuuji tells them all to go to hell. Yugi is the only one who seems to understand; he never brings it up, but even in their uneasy peace Ryuuji can still sense the issue weighing between them. He wants to tell Yugi that it has to be like this; that it's only way he can get better, but he's not sure he can convince anyone. He can't even convince himself.
He calls a few times, just to check up on how it's going, always declining an invitation to actually get his father on the line. Without his asking, one of the nurses takes it upon herself to make sure she calls him weekly with updates. He rarely takes the calls, but the cold shoulder doesn't seem to deter her. She leaves voicemails.
She's incredibly thorough. Without asking, he has all information he needs; basic status updates, upcoming family events, doctor's appointments, pending payments. He pays the bills that arrive in his mailbox without thinking about where the checks are going, writes events on the calendar that he knows he'll never attend, watches the phone ring without picking it up, because he knows. He can hear the frustration in the nurse's voice, the judgment in her clipped words as she tells him about family night, about the choir concert, holiday dinners. They know he'll never come. And he knows that there are other people like him, people that have shoved their parents into a forgotten corner of the world, reducing them to a budget item just for some peace of mind, but he can't picture how they can live with themselves. He doesn't know how he does.
He tries to visit twice, the second time making it as far as the front door before he loses his nerve and turns around. He can't put a word to what scares him. It's not the idea of disappointment—God knows he's an old pro at that. He just knows he can't face his father, not now, after a betrayal that seems more terrible the longer he avoids confronting it.
The therapist asks him what he's afraid of.
He remembers the possessive mania his father used to control him with. He can't trust his memories anymore, doesn't know if they're real or if they're simply amalgams of dreams and fears, the same scenes played out in town after town, night after night. He thinks about resorting to board games to stave off panic attacks, about sleeping with the lights on, about the overwhelming sense of guilt that's driven him into his current state of anxiety. A night he thinks about chess: knight takes rook, shadows growing solid, their edges cold. He wants to escape. The dice always come up snake eyes.
He's afraid of ending up like his father, he tells her, but that's always been as obvious as it was inevitable.
"Obvious, maybe," she says. "Not inevitable."
The next week he catches Yugi and Sugoroku playing Duel Monsters. No holograms, just a friendly game at the kitchen table. Ryuuji's appreciation for the game has grown since befriending the Mutos: he understands why they connect with it and the bonds it has helped them form.
He still prefers other games. Yugi doesn't mind, because in Yugi's eyes, the name of the game doesn't matter as much as the person he's playing it with.
Ryuuji watches them watch the field, seeing the patterns as they see them, following the shifts in the game as they explore their options, probing each other's defenses in search of a weakness.
Yugi seems reluctant to play a winning combination and end the game, but when Sugoroku accuses him of not playing his best he denies it, shaking his head and laughing as he lays his cards down. Ryuuji asks Sugoroku why he still plays with an unbeatable opponent.
Yugi flushes and Sugoroku laughs. "I'll beat him one of these days," he says.
When he sees Ryuuji's expression he adds, more gently: "Games are a diversion, a way of spending time with someone you love. Winning doesn't matter."
Then why play a game where there's a winner and a loser to begin with? Ryuuji asks. There are games where "everyone wins", and they aren't bestsellers.
Sugoroku waves him off, but Yugi twists in his seat and tugs at the edges of his sleeves.
"Because," he says. "When you lose to someone you love, when you're both doing your best, that's a gift. You're giving them that victory."
"That's a fine thing to say when you never lose," Sugoroku grumbles, and Yugi laughs again, sheepish.
"Well," he said. "I lose in other ways."
That week the nursing home doesn't call and Ryuuji almost drives himself mad wondering why, but the next week the voicemail is there as usual.
Just someone's lapse in memory, a clerical error.
He makes the mistake of telling his therapist about the voicemail. She asks him why he was so worried, what he thought might happen.
He just thought that something happened, is all. He doesn't want the hassle of cleaning up his father's messes again.
You don't want to be responsible for him, she mirrors back, and he snaps, biting words back at her.
Why should he? He's done his time. They don't owe each other anything.
She asks him if he feels guilty.
He didn't do anything wrong.
That's not what she asked.
When he snatches a coffee cup off the table and hurls it at the wall, she doesn't flinch at the sound of it breaking, even when he does. She folds her hands and smiles. She tells him he doesn't need to apologize even as he's stuttering out the words.
Explore the root of those feelings, she tells him. The function of guilt is to tell us when we've done wrong, but our psyche can be flawed, our emotions can be twisted. What violation have you committed, and is it equal to what you feel?
He doesn't give her an answer. The answer seems so obvious he's afraid to put words to it.
He's rummaging through the kitchen one day, looking for some paper bags, when he runs across the chess board on top of the fridge.
He pulls it down, puts it on the counter, and then draws back. He thought he'd managed to get rid of most of his memories.
It'd be a shame to get rid of this anyway; it's practically an antique.
He draws his fingers along the side of the box, forging a line through the dust lining the rim. Slowly, without really willing it, he flips the latch, opens the box, begins assembling the pieces.
There are a thousand compositions in which he could have arranged the board, but he sets up the last game he remembers them playing. He'd been checkmated, as usual. Chess was one of those games he'd never really enjoyed enough to excel at. But he was good enough to know the strategies, to remember the patterns, and recreating this game was easy, even going back a few turns to the point where he had made the mistake that had led to his loss. He stands, studies the board for a few minutes.
When his phone rings on the counter he comes back to his senses and sweeps all the pieces back into the box, shoves it back on top of the fridge. No point hashing out old losses.
He gets a call from the nursing home a month later, telling him that his father's been checked into intensive care at the local hospital. Something about a stroke. The secretary's voice is curt, insensitive. She thinks she's speaking to thin air, that the words "not much time left" are falling on deaf ears, that all it will mean to him is an end to the bills, to the constant reminders of his failure.
Ryuuji tells his manager he has to go out of town for a few days, but everything's fine, don't worry, just a distant relative needs some help.
He goes home, puts a bag together and throws on a coat, but once he gets to the front door, he can't seem to force himself to open it. Instead, he wraps his arms around his ribs, presses his head against the paneled wood, and cries, deep heaving sobs that only serve to make him feel worse instead of relieving the anxiety that's trapping him in place. It takes him more than twenty minutes to get his shit together enough to get out of the apartment and to the train station.
The whole trip he spends praying that his father will die before he gets there. He doesn't know what else to ask for. After all these months, he still doesn't know if he wants forgiveness or retribution.
The hospital is a nightmare of sterile sympathy and broken families. The nurse warns him that his father is barely coherent; he won't recognize anyone, most likely won't be able to speak. She speaks of his remaining life in terms of hours, doesn't seem to notice the mixture of relief and terror that floods his every vein.
The lights are too bright; the room a stark maze of medical equipment. From the bed, his father's eyes seek him out. Ryuuji doesn't hesitate; he's too well-schooled for that, but he doesn't smile as he covers his father's hand with his own, rough callouses intermingling with scar tissue and varicose veins, burns and bones and the burden of dozens of years borne together. They can hardly qualify as family, but there's no other word for what they are. Their histories tie them together like tendons knotting to bone: late nights spent warding off shadows with haphazard games of chess, ironing out the flaws in their own minds and in each other's, weighing the possibilities of revenge and redemption from every angle. Their failures tie them together, and now, watching the only person who really knew him disappear in a fog of dementia and narcotics, the room shrinking down into scratched plastic tiles and the smell of hand sanitizer, Ryuuji feels his stomach turn, the stone in his throat growing heavy as he tries to maintain a cool impassivity.
You've won, he tells himself. You're normal, despite everything, and he couldn't take it—
But they'd both learned it was never about winning. Even if Ryuuji had run himself into the ground in his efforts to avoid failure, winning had never given either of them any security.
You don't owe him anything, he tells himself, but he holds his father's gaze, the knot in his throat tightening until he's afraid to breathe lest he choke, and he tightens his grip, looking for any sign of recognition, of significance, in his father's eyes. Finding nothing there, he says what he needs to say anyway, and hopes that somehow, his words pierce through the swamp of his father's mind, that he'll finally understand that Ryuuji knows, has always known, what it's like to hate yourself.
"You're okay."
He doesn't know who his words are for, but he knows that they both need to hear them, and even if his father doesn't respond, even if he's lost in an oblivion of familiar strangers, it's enough. They made it through. They're still human. They faced life the hard way, but it was still the right way, scars and all.
"You're okay," he repeats, softly, and takes a breath as he leans over the bed, into the light, the hospital blanket rough against his palm, his father's skin frail and satiny soft with old age.
The end is close now, but the worst is already over. There's nothing left to do but wait until the light came, until the shadows receded. They could do that. They knew how to bear the hours. It was the one thing they were good at.
End
A/N: So I started this story in 2012, which just goes to show how ridiculously slow I can be. As of next month, I'll have been stuck in YuGiOh hell for more than half of my life, which is just...yikes. Props to any of you who are stuck here with me.
A "Dead Draw" is a chess term for a game that has progressed to the point where neither player has a possibility of winning. I just found out it is also a term in the TCG for drawing a card that is functionally useless at the time it is added to the hand. The "chapter" titles are the three stages of graduated exposure, which is a common technique for treating phobias.